The One I Love Read online

  “What about Jim?” Elle asked.

  “Jim is my sister’s husband.”

  “Was her husband. Your sister died a long time ago.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s a very nice man. He cares about you – he’s a little on the short side but you must admit those dimples are to die for.”

  “You’re sick,” said Leslie.

  “I am not.”

  “He’s my –”

  Elle put her finger against Leslie’s lips. “He’s your friend, that’s all.”

  Leslie saw it differently, and when Elle realized that she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, she returned to the subject of Mark. “Why the rush?” she asked.

  “I’ve known him three weeks.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You sleep with people you’ve met in toilets, for God’s sake!”

  “Don’t make me sorry for sharing my adventures with you. Besides, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you, a woman who hasn’t had sex with anything that wasn’t battery-operated for eighteen years.”

  “So?” Leslie said.

  “So, I’m curious as to what the rush is.”

  “I’m having surgery on the first of July.”

  “What kind of surgery?”

  “A prophylactic bilateral mastectomy and laparoscopic hysterectomy.”

  “A what and what?”

  Leslie explained the procedures to an open-mouthed Elle.

  “How long have you known about this?” Elle asked.

  “Pretty much since we met.”

  “Why are you only mentioning it now?”

  “It didn’t come up.”

  “That’s the kind of thing you bring up.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Leslie said. “This friendship thing is still new to me.”

  “You’re forgiven. But only because you’re having your tits lopped off.”

  “Charming!” Leslie said, and laughed a little.

  Now it was clear to Elle why Leslie was in such a rush to have sex with an actual man and a ball-less one at that. She wanted to experience it with all her bits just one last time. Elle wished her friend good luck and told her she’d expect her call the very next day with full details. Leslie had no intention of providing her with anything like the full details but she agreed just so Elle would let her go home. She had so much to do before Mark arrived.

  An hour before he was due, the house was clean and she was washed, dressed and looking well, even if she thought so herself. She had wondered about cooking, but she wasn’t a cook so it seemed like a much better idea to order in when he came. That way he could pick what he wanted and there would be no chance of him enduring a bad meal.

  Jim rang half an hour before Mark was due. “Well?” he said.

  “Well what?”

  “Are you excited?”

  “None of your business,” she said, beginning to regret telling him about Mark at all. “Go away.”

  “Ah, come on, I’m here sitting alone watching a DVD about two homeless drug addicts.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you think I should play music or is that really corny?”

  “No, it’s not corny – definitely play music. What have you got?”

  “Lots of stuff.”

  “Okay, what do you feel like listening to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think.”

  “I can’t, I’m too nervous.”

  “Okay, go over to your CD rack, close your eyes and pick something.”

  “I don’t have a CD rack. I buy all my music on-line.”

  “Well, what do you do that for?”

  “Because I no longer live in the year 1983,” she said.

  “Fine. So close your eyes and click on a song or do whatever it is you do to listen to music.”

  “Okay. Can I go now?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And, Leslie?”

  “What?”

  “Enjoy yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hung up, went over to her computer and clicked onto her media player. She closed her eyes and dragged the mouse along the various tracks listed, stopped and clicked, and Alanis Morissette’s “In Praise Of The Vulnerable Man” started to play. Apt.

  She sat holding her cat and waited for Mark to come.

  Tom opened the door and found Trish, his liaison officer, standing outside. The house call was unscheduled so his heart started to race and his palms were instantly damp. If he’d allowed himself, he would have begun to shake.

  “Calm down, we haven’t found her,” she warned.

  He followed her to the sitting room. They sat.

  “Crimeline are going to do a reconstruction.”

  “Okay,” he said. “So Alexandra has captured the media’s imagination. Finally.”

  “Finally.” She nodded. “It’s good news, Tom.”

  “I know.”

  “You should thank your friends. Without them …”

  “She’d just be a number.”

  “Never just a number,” she said, “but media interest always helps – just keeping her face out there helps.”

  She left soon after. Tom picked up the phone and called Jane. He told her the good news and they agreed to an impromptu celebration, even though Elle and Leslie were unavailable. He suggested that he would cook and she agreed to bring the wine, so at eight fifteen she knocked on his door.

  It was the first time Jane had visited Tom in his home and it felt so strange being greeted by pictures of the adult Alexandra, the woman she didn’t know. In the sitting room there were photos of their wedding day. Alexandra had made a beautiful bride even in the shot when she’d stuck out her tongue at the photographer. Tom poured wine and they clinked glasses, as was customary. He thanked her once again and told her how grateful he was, and she told him to shut up and that he was boring her. It was true that media interest in the disappearance of Alexandra Kavanagh had increased considerably since their little exhibition, but they were a long way from finding her.

  Once again, Tom put all his hopes in the one basket. “This will work,” he said.

  “Please don’t get too excited. It’s only a reconstruction. It’s good news but that’s all.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself.”

  “I don’t care. I’m happy.”

  The exhibition had been a great success in so far as the critics were happy. Alexandra’s plight – and the plight of many others – was given a little time in the spotlight and they had made some money for the charity. Originally Elle had put the painting of Alexandra aside for Tom or Alexandra’s family, pending Tom’s decision, but only five of the twelve paintings had sold and a buyer had offered a great deal of money for Alexandra, so now Jane found herself in the uncomfortable position of having to approach Tom on the matter. If the money was going into the Moore family business there was no way she would have sold the painting, but because the sales were in aid of charity she felt obliged to earn as much money as possible. It had been a shock to her that the exhibition had failed to sell out because Elle had been a sure-fire seller for a long time. Jane had begun to notice a slowdown in sales with some of her other artists, but she had put it down to various reasons and now she was wondering whether or not a change was going to come. This concerned her because while she had banked her money and scrimped and saved, her little sister had gone through it like there was no tomorrow.

  Over dinner she broached the subject of the picture with Tom.

  “Definitely sell it,” he said.

  “Oh, great. I’m so glad you feel that way.”

  “To be honest, it’s a bit of a relief. It was just too sad.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Do you ever wonder about Fate?”

  “Not really.”

  “I do,” he said. “I think about that night in the lift and what would have happened if I’d taken the stairs or decided to give the gig a miss. I
f I’d gone home with my little bag of flyers, I think I’d have lost the will and I’d be gone.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  After dinner they sat in the sitting room together and Jane told Tom about Kurt’s birthday present of a motorbike and how she’d wrestled with it. Dominic had finally broken her but she feared that she might now never sleep again. He laughed and told her she’d find a way – after all, he had. He didn’t mention the way he’d found was getting pissed.

  Eventually she thanked him for a really nice evening, one she had needed badly. He was getting her coat when the doorbell rang and, thinking it was her taxi, she answered it.

  A girl stood in the doorway, looking at her quizzically.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked.

  “I’m a friend,” Jane said. The girl’s aggressive tone set her on edge.

  “Jeanette, go on into the kitchen and I’ll join you in a moment,” Tom warned.

  “No,” Jeanette said, and it was apparent she’d been drinking. “I’m Jeanette, Tom’s girlfriend.” She put her hand out to shake Jane’s.

  Jane got such a fright she shook her hand and told her it was lovely to meet her. This took the wind out of Jeanette’s sails. Her aggression dissipated and she told Jane it was nice to meet her too, and all the while Tom was biting his lip and praying he was dreaming while at the same time trying to work out a plausible lie to salvage the situation. “Jeanette, please, go and wait for me in the kitchen,” he begged.

  Jeanette said goodbye to Jane, who was still smiling like a simpleton, and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

  “Jane –” Tom attempted to explain, but Jane just shook her head.

  “No,” she said. She walked out of his open front door and he followed her to the gate.

  “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “Oh, I understand,” she said. “You’re a man, and men are self-centred, lying, cheating bastards. I thought you were different. I thought you were decent. But you’re just like the rest of them.”

  “Jane –”

  “Don’t Jane me!” she said, and now she was crying. “In fact, you’re worse than the rest of them because you pretend to be better – you pretend to give a shit!”

  “I do!” he shouted.

  “Your wife is missing, she’s alone and lost or hurt or hurting or dying or dead, and what are you doing? You’re fucking, that’s what you’re doing.”

  She moved to open the gate and he grabbed her arm. “Please,” he said.

  “Go fuck your girlfriend,” she said, “and let me worry about my old friend.” She pulled her arm away and ran towards the taxi that was approaching. It stopped, she got in and Tom watched her disappear.

  He walked inside his house and grabbed Jeanette’s coat from the banister. He walked into his kitchen. He wrapped it around her shoulders, pushed her through his hall and front door and closed it in her face without saying one word. She banged on his window and door for a few minutes, then gave up. She knew that whatever sweetness they had once shared had rapidly turned sour. The next night she’d tell her friends all about it over dinner and they’d tell her he was a user and a tosser and she was too good for him anyway, because he was a broken man.

  “Throw him on the pyre and light a match,” Davey would say, and Jeanette would laugh and decide that although she would miss him she wouldn’t miss his problems so she’d drink to finding a man her own age – sexy, funny, uncomplicated and without a tragic past.

  When Leslie didn’t call, Elle decided to visit her in her apartment. She buzzed, Leslie let her in and she bounded up the stairs. She sat with the cat while Leslie looked for some teabags because Elle was attempting to cut down on coffee.

  “Well?” Elle asked.

  “He didn’t come.”

  “He probably couldn’t – I mean, I’m not a doctor but cum is semen and semen lives in balls, he is ball-less – ergo no cum.”

  “He didn’t turn up.”

  “Oh. What happened?”

  “About an hour after he was due he phoned and told me he was sorry but that he wasn’t ready,” Leslie said, dropping a teabag into a mug of boiling water.

  Elle preferred the bag to be in the mug before the boiling water but she wasn’t about to argue. “Sorry,” she said.

  “The man has lost his wife, his kids and his balls all in the space of a year. He’s just finished chemo. I was mad to think anything could happen.”

  “Not mad. You were just trying to open yourself up and maybe you rushed it with Mark, but that’s okay. Next time will be better.”

  Leslie smiled at her new friend because what she’d said was true. She had rushed into something with Mark. She was so desperate to move on, and to be with someone who really understood what she was going through and it had all been a little too simple. The poor man had his own issues, his battles to win and lose. Elle was right: next time it would be better because next time she’d know better. I’m not ready and that’s okay.

  “How’s Jim?” Elle asked.

  “Do not bring Jim into this,” Leslie warned.

  Elle put her hands up. “Okay, Miss Touchy.”

  “I am not Miss Touchy!”

  After Elle had left most of her tea in the cup and Leslie was fortified with a nice hot coffee, they decided to take advantage of the bright, warm day by going for a stroll in the Phoenix Park. Leslie had stopped to look in her postbox when Deborah from Apartment 8a entered the main door. Deborah had managed to maintain a safe distance from Leslie since the incident in which she’d mistaken stale cat-shit for Leslie’s rotting corpse. She mumbled hello.

  “Well, hello, Deborah,” Leslie said loudly.

  “Hi,” Deborah said.

  “This is my friend Elle. Say hello to my friend, Deborah.”

  “Hi,” Deborah said again.

  Elle grinned. She’d heard the story on more than one occasion because, for some reason, Deborah’s misguided concern for Leslie had really hit a nerve.

  “You see, Deborah, loners don’t have friends.”

  Deborah nodded and looked about to see if there was anyone around who could possibly save her if Leslie decided to physically attack. “I’m going now,” she said, and made her way to the lift.

  “Lovely seeing you!” Leslie called.

  Deborah disappeared into the lift.

  “You need help,” Elle said.

  “Yes,” Leslie said, “I really do.”

  They took a stroll in the park and ended up in the zoo and enjoyed a perfectly charming day together that both women would remember with fondness for a very long time.

  On 29 May 2008 the television show Crimeline featured a reconstruction of Alexandra’s last movements. In the week that had passed Tom had attempted to call Jane but she didn’t pick up the phone or respond to his messages. In one of those unanswered messages he reminded her of the date and time of the show and thanked her again for all her support and help in getting him this far along the track. Then he apologized for not being a better man.

  Jane had listened to his message a number of times and her anger turned to regret and embarrassment because, as much as she was disappointed that Tom had turned out to be a human being with actual faults, the person she had really been shouting at that night was Dominic. Of course, that was Jane’s problem. She couldn’t scream and shout at Dominic because she had always been so desperate to win his love that she’d never allowed him to see who she really was and how messed up, sad and lonely, and sometimes bitter and hateful she could be. Because to show him that would be to go against the image of cool, kind, anything-goes Jane, the Jane she had spent the last eighteen years creating for Dominic and Dominic alone. She had taken out her pain and aggression on Tom – poor, desperate, haunted Tom – and she felt really sick about it.

  The only silver lining was that she hadn’t told Elle or Leslie about her encounter with Tom’s whore. Her reasoning had simply been that she didn’t w
ant them to be as disappointed in him as she was. She didn’t want them to stop searching for her friend just because her husband was a selfish dick. But now it dawned on her that neither Leslie nor Elle would have been as disappointed as she was because neither of them was a silly romantic. While she had seen Tom as some sort of hero, they had merely seen him as a man.

  The night of the reconstruction she sat in her sitting room with Elle and Rose, and even Kurt and Irene took a break from pretending to study so that they could follow Alexandra into the ether and with any luck beyond. She had thought about calling Tom just before the show aired but she didn’t have the nerve so she left it.

  Breda sat on her favourite green velvet chair surrounded by her family – Eamonn and Frankie, Kate and Owen. Even their five-year-old, Ciara, was sitting there quietly, waiting to see Auntie Alexandra or at least the actress who would be playing her.

  Alexandra’s father smoked a cigarette in the garden, then came inside and sat down in the midst of his family, finally about to face what had gone so wrong.

  Despite Breda’s invitation, Tom watched it alone.

  The reconstruction started and an actress with brown hair, dressed in black trousers and a black shirt with a large bow, carrying a black tote bag, appeared in the doorway of Alexandra’s home. The camera followed her walking along her street. An actress in her mid-fifties was brushing the step at number fourteen. Mrs Murphy had been asked if she’d like to play herself but she was too shy and felt an actress would be better. The fake Mrs Murphy called out to the fake Alexandra saying what a lovely day it was. The fake Alexandra agreed that it was perfect and she walked on towards the station and through the turnstiles, then stood waiting for the DART.

  The same three teenagers who had seen the real Alexandra sing James Morrison agreed to be part of the reconstruction to win cool points – the eleven months had done wonders for their skin, especially the girl’s. The fake Alexandra started to sing James Morrison’s “Last Goodbye” badly. The teenagers acted as though they were laughing and one of the boys even slapped his thigh. The fake Alexandra stuck out her tongue and they pretended to laugh harder, ensuring the camera moved away from them quickly. When the DART arrived she stepped onto it and sat beside an actor in his mid-fifties. Across the way an actress in her forties was looking out of the window. The camera returned to the fake Alexandra and the fake older man. He asked her to wake him at Tara Street if he slept. She agreed. There was a shot of the DART moving along the track before returning to the inside. The DART pulled into Tara Street station and the fake Alexandra nudged the older man and told him it was time to get off. He got off and she jumped out of the DART, followed him and handed him a bag. He thanked her and she returned to the train.