Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (21 page)

Because it’s like this; I cannot handle being let down one more time, I tell him, inwardly marvelling at how firm and resolute living alone in New York has made me. So if it’s no, it’s no, I say. But if it’s yes, then I need you to tell me that no power on earth will prevent you from being here for me. I need your word. I need that from you now.

Feck’s sake, is it that much to ask for?

OK then, yes, he eventually says. Go ahead and book the
flights. I’ll make it, I’ll find the time somehow and I’ll get there.

Well whatdyya know, I think exhaustedly, slumping down onto a chair, utterly ground down by all the plea-bargaining and begging.

Finally, finally, finally. A breakthrough.

Chapter Eight

March already and the previews are racing in, each one getting incrementally better and better and I’m reasonably confident of this, mainly because our notes sessions with Jack are becoming proportionately shorter and shorter, always a good barometer. Now opening night nerves have eclipsed all else, heightened by the fact that between the rest of the cast, we have almost a planeload of people coming over from Ireland for the big night. A bit like a big gang of soccer supporters, minus the green face paint and vuvuzelas.

Except for me, that is. I just have Dan, but that’s enough. Frankly I don’t know what I’m more stunned about, that he’s actually agreed to take time off work to be here for me, or that I’m going to be seeing him in no time at all. And that it’ll be real, proper quality time too.

Yet more good news: my mother is travelling down from Washington for the big night too – the first time I’ll have seen her in over a year! Ever the diplomat, once she found out that Dan was coming to stay with me, she tactfully booked herself into the nearby New York Palace Hotel, so as to give us some privacy. Bless.

Anyway, come the big day and I take one final, last look
around my shining, sparkling, blonde apartment. I’ve been cleaning and tidying it like a lunatic all week, dotting candles around the place and stocking up the fridge with champagne and a load of extravagant little nibbles. I even went out to Filene’s Basement (a discount store much favoured by Blythe) and treated myself to brand new high count Egyptian cotton bed linen. Not only that – I figured, feck it anyway, not every night you open on Broadway, so I splashed out and really spoilt myself with a brand new Donna Karen dress for tonight. Cherry red, Dan’s all-time favourite colour on me. All ready for his arrival…un believably in just a few hours’ time!

Dan’s travelling on the afternoon flight which gets in at four pm, by which time I’ll have to be in the theatre, so I’ve asked him to come straight to the apartment. I’ve left a spare key for him with Stan, our gorgeous doorman, so he can let himself in and freshen up for the big night ahead.

It’s bizarre, almost like I’ve torn right down the middle into two different Annies. One is nearly paralysed with nerves over all the critics being out there this evening, while the other one is practically dancing round the place with excitement because in just a few short hours, it’ll almost be like a second honeymoon for me and Dan. And everyone will finally get to meet him too, at the after show party in…where else? Sardi’s the famous restaurant, which has become a bit like our canteen by now.

Plus on top of all this, we’ve got the whole day tomorrow to look forward to as well! His time here is unbelievably tight, so I’ve got his whole trip worked out a bit like a military operation. Because let’s face it, everything works better with a plan. Weddings, murders, everything.

Brekkie tomorrow in the Carnegie deli which I know
he’ll adore, then a stroll through Central Park; lunch in Tao, this really cool Asian restaurant, then back to the apartment so I can get organised for work. Plus I’ve got him a ticket to see the show again in the evening, and last but not least…the pièce de résistance…I’ve booked dinner for the two of us after work at the Rockefeller Café which overlooks the ice skating rink, where we first got engaged all those years ago. So the two of us will be enveloped in happy memories for forty-eight blissful hours. Everything is planned right down to the last detail and right now, I’m starting to feel a bit like a character in a soap opera who says, ‘But what can possibly go wrong?’

Time passes so extra-slowly that I nearly want to tear my hair out with nerves, so unable to take it any more I finally leave the gleaming, spotless apartment at noon. Even though it’s a drizzling, grey day, I decide to take a calming stroll to the Shubert. Fifth Avenue is all sealed off for the Saint Patrick’s Day parade and although I wish Dan was here to see it, I’m consoled by the fact that he’ll be here in the blink of an eye.

My mind quickly does some calculations: he must be heading to Shannon airport by now his time, probably even checking in. I try calling his mobile, but it’s switched off, which I take to mean that he’s possibly already on board the flight and on his way.

When I get to the theatre, it’s like Kensington Palace the week Diana died – nothing but a sea of bouquets waiting for all of us, filling every available nook and cranny.

‘Hi, Annie!’ says Hayley, the gorgeous front of house manager, ‘good to see you! So, how are those nerves then, huh?’ Hayley, by the way, is one of those fabulously positive people who make you want to spend the whole day basking
in their magnificent good cheer. She’s always in good form, always laughing and messing around. I manage a weak, watery smile and she tells me she’s already put my flowers up in the dressing room I’m sharing with Liz.

‘Now don’t you go getting stagefright on me, honey,’ she says cheerily, clocking the rabbit-in-the-headlamps terror in my eyes. ‘You’re gonna be just fine! Just get out there and kick the living hell outta the show, babe!’

‘I’ll do my best!’ I grin back at her and race up the stairs, my heart thumping, wondering who the hell would be sending me flowers anyway? Dan? Would he have had time before he left Ireland?

Three magnificent bouquets worthy of the Chelsea Flower Show are waiting on my dressing table: one from Jack to say good luck, one from my mother to say she’s looking forward to seeing me after the show, and the third and most impressive one…impatiently I tear the card open. It has to be from Dan, I think, just
has
to be. He wouldn’t forget to send flowers on such a big, important night, would he?

But they’re from Harvey Shapiro.

You’re doing great, kid. Keep up the good work, I’m real proud of you!

Seven thirty and I must be driving poor Liz nuts with my non-stop pacing up and down the dressing room floor. Once I get out on stage I’ll be grand, it’s just all the shagging hanging around that’s a killer. We’re both in our costumes, hair done and fully made up, all we need is for eight o’clock to come.

Jack comes in, looking like a pagan prince in a suit so sharp you’d nearly get a paper cut off it. He hugs both Liz and me in turn, his touch both ice cold and rock hard, the
only one in the building who’s not betraying the tiniest scrap of nerves. It flashes through my mind; how exactly does he do it anyway? Stay so calm at a time like this? Sedatives strong enough to knock out a rhinoceros, perhaps?

‘Just do what you’re doing, Annie Cole,’ he says, looking me straight in the eye. ‘And you’ll knock ’em dead.’

A quarter to eight and I’m just about to head backstage for the act one beginner’s call when my mobile rings. It’s been beep beeping for the past hour, but I’ve just been ignoring it. I know it’s nothing urgent, just good luck messages coming through and that there’ll be plenty of time later on to read them all. But as it happens, I’m waiting on Liz who’s still messing around with her eye make-up, so I answer.

A crackling tone, like it’s coming long distance.

Then I hear Dan’s voice.

Immediately my entire digestive system clenches with foreboding. Suddenly I have to remind myself to breathe.

‘Annie? I’m so glad I caught you…’

‘Where are you?’ I ask stupidly, in a rare moment of prescience knowing the answer before I’m even told.

‘I’m still in Stickens.’

Silence.

Static over the phone.

And all of a sudden…I don’t know how to feel. There’s been an emergency, he tells me, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in a local Waterford farm and there was just no way he could travel. He’s so sorry to let me down, but he wants me to know that it couldn’t be helped…he’d been texting earlier but I never answered…he wants me to understand that him leaving was out of the question…all the same excuses that I’ve been listening to for years are trotted out.

Meanwhile I just stand there.

I probably blink.

I’m utterly mute and there’s a time-delay while pain finds its way to my brain and eventually I do feel something. The exact same sensation you’d get if a knife was plunged directly into your heart. Deep shock on a cellular level.

Because
of course
he still could have come. He could have made it if he’d wanted to.

He could have taken two days off. Andrew and James could easily have coped without him for two lousy days. They’d have managed, of course they would. That was all I was asking for, forty-eight hours of his poxy time. After all my meticulous planning, after looking forward to seeing him for so long. After spelling it out to him that I couldn’t stand being let down again.

And now this.

‘Miss Cole, Miss Shields, this is your five minute call,’ the tannoy crackles above us.

‘I have to go,’ is all I can say into the phone, before heat rushes to my face and a sudden wave of nausea sweeps over me. I race into the tiny ensuite bathroom and barely make it in time before I’m violently sick.

Liz is amazing, but then as she says herself, she’s got a lot of experience in dealing with vomit.

‘Oh come on, honey, you’re just nervous, that’s all,’ she says firmly, splashing cold water on my temples, ‘you’ll be grand once you get out there. Opening night jitters is all that’s wrong with you. I’ve a small emergency bottle of brandy in my bag – do you fancy a little slug? For medicinal purposes?’

‘No, Liz. And this isn’t nerves.’

‘Course it is. It’s adrenaline, the poor person’s cocaine. That’s all that’s wrong with you.’

‘You don’t understand. He’s not coming. Dan’s not coming.’

She looks momentarily as stunned as I feel, but just then the tannoy crackles to life again – the stage director, sounding distinctly panicky now.

‘Miss Cole, Miss Shields, will you standby
please.’

‘Come on, babe,’ she says, gently getting me to my feet. ‘I know it’s hard, but this will just have to wait till afterwards. We’ve a show to do.’

One good thing has come out of all this: the sheer terror I was feeling all day has completely vanished. An icy calm has taken over me and I actually wonder if I’ll ever be able to feel anything again. I’m like someone on mute autopilot as I walk down the stairs and patiently wait backstage. To look at me from the outside, you’d even think I was calm. And as I step out onstage, I hear my own voice, so surprisingly cool and detached, so completely unemotional.

Dan doesn’t love me anymore,
is the thought that keeps playing like a loop in my head.

What? Says my logical mind. What was that treacherous thought you just had? It’s true, says my subconscious. And once the thought gets its feet under the table, there’s no budging it to leave. He doesn’t love me any more and what’s more, I think the final, last vestige of any sliver of affection I felt for him has now well and truly been stomped underfoot.

But this is Dan we’re talking about, insists my logical mind, he’s the hook on which everything else in my life hangs, isn’t he?

But in my heart, I know my subconscious is on the money.

My marriage, long sickening, has just died.

R.I.P.

The after show party is held in Sardi’s Restaurant right across the road from the theatre, which would comfortably sit three hundred, uncomfortably sit four hundred but tonight there must be at least five hundred people here; the place is packed to the rafters and it’s pure, organised PR hell. Not so much a guest list as a small town.

And the atmosphere is dense with the sweet smell of success. I’ve never actually smelled success before, but not even someone as punch-drunk from the body blow I’ve just taken could possibly mistake it. It’s actually not unlike sweat, only stronger. Anyway, we took a total of seven curtain calls and the standing ovation at the end of the show lasted for a good five minutes, so everyone seems to be walking on air.

Except me, that is.

Liz is terrific and doesn’t so much link as solder my arm to hers all the way from the theatre to the restaurant, as if I might stumble over or else run away given half the chance. But as soon as she shoves and elbows her way through the packed doorway, she immediately makes for the bar jubilantly yelling out that she smells free wine. I lose sight not only of her but of the rest of the cast in the throng as well.

The only time I crack a smile is when I spot my mother, with her neat, dark bobbed hair, hair that behaves itself and lies flat for her, unlike my side-show-Bob-from-the-Simpsons effort. Mum, of course, like a good little diplomat, is wearing green for Paddy’s Day this evening – a beautiful pale olive Louise Kennedy trouser suit, but then that’s my mother for you: patriotic and supportive of all things Irish to the bitter end.

The minute she sets eyes on me, her impeccably made-up
face creases with worry as she instantly cops that something is wrong. Flatly, I blurt out that Dan never came and still she doesn’t betray the slightest scrap of emotion, but then she never does.

‘Smile graciously, dear, and we’ll discuss this tomorrow,’ she says, pencil-lipped. From the corner of my eye, I can see Chris hugging her husband, Josh, who then snogs her right in the middle of the bar, in full view of everyone.

So that’s what true love looks like, is all I can think, dully. Glad I saw it before I died.

Then I spot Blythe, sitting in prime position at the head of a table, basking in compliments and graciously waving over to me like a duchess. Her son/pride and joy/reason for living is beside her, waiting on her hand and foot, leaping up to the bar whenever her drink needs refilling. For her part, every time she as much as looks in his direction it’s like she’s going to physically burst with pride.