Page 152 of The Honeymoon Affair

‘Absolutely. I’m going to the bar. Would you like another drink?’

I glance at my watch and shake my head.

‘I’m not cut out for late-night sessions any more,’ I say. ‘I’m going home.’

I get up and begin my goodbyes, telling everyone that I’ll miss them madly and insisting that we’ll stay in touch. There are lots of hugs and good wishes and it’s nearly twenty minutes later before I actually leave the pub. Although night has fallen, a faint light remains on the horizon that lifts my spirits and says summer is on the way.

Despite being tired, there’s a real spring in my step as I begin the walk back to Marino – I’d decided it was better to stay with Mum and Dad tonight rather than schlep across town – but then I see a taxi approach with its light on and I stop it.

‘Terenure,’ I tell the driver as I climb into the back seat and close my eyes.

Ariel

I know I shouldn’t have allowed Charles to refill my glass again, but there’s a lightness in the atmosphere between us that hasn’t been there for months, and I can’t help feeling happy about it.

‘Perhaps all we needed was for you to dump me as a client,’ he says when I tell him this.

‘Oh, don’t say that. We’ve made mistakes, Charles, but we’ve got over them.’

‘To us,’ he says again. ‘Thank you for everything. For being such a great agent. For being a good wife, even if it didn’t work out in the end. For always pointing me in the right direction. For putting up with me.’

‘You’re welcome.’ I take a sip. ‘I really do have to go after this. I’m meeting my accountant later. There are a few outstanding bits and pieces about the deal I want to check with him.’

‘I thought it was signed.’

‘Trivial things,’ I say.

‘It’s Josh you’re meeting?’ he asks.

I nod.

It looks as though he’s going to ask me something else, but in the end, he doesn’t. He pours himself some more champagne and asks Siri to play jazz. As always, the playlist starts with ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily’, but then it moves on to Duke Ellington’s ‘Mood Indigo’, which is one of my own personal favourites. I tell him to turn the volume up and I twirl around the room, the glass of bubbly in my hand.

I suppose it’s because of the music, and because I’ve let my guard down, that neither of us hears the door opening. But both of us hear Iseult’s sharp exclamation of ‘What the actual fuck!’

I turn around so suddenly that I stumble into the table and send the champagne glass skittering across the room. It bangs into the wall and shatters into pieces.

‘It’s not what you think,’ says Charles to Iseult. ‘It absolutely isn’t.’

I wince. Even written down, ‘it’s not what you think’ is a cliché. Coming from his lips, it smacks of desperation.

‘You know what I’m thinking, do you?’ Iseult is spitting fiery rage. Her dark eyes are positively black and her spiky hair looks like sharp nails on her head.

‘Neither of us knows what you’re thinking,’ I say. ‘But if it’s anything along the lines of Charles and me disrespecting you in some way, you’re totally wrong.’

‘I don’t have to think you’re disrespecting me,’ she snarls. ‘I can see that for myself.’

‘Look, Ariel called up to the house to share some important news about her business,’ says Charles. ‘That’s all.’

‘Important news that you celebrate by having champagne and dancing around the living room.’ Iseult gives him a look of disgust. ‘The same way you celebrate unimportant news with her.’

‘That’s not true.’ I speak softly and calmly. ‘Honestly, Izzy, when you hear—’

‘Oh fuck off,’ she says. ‘I’m not listening to you and I’m not listening to him. I’ve had enough of whatever weird psycho drama you guys are playing. You’re far too invested in each other to give a shit about anyone else.’

‘If you’d just—’

‘I won’t just!’ She glares at him. ‘I won’t be taken for an absolute fool any more. I’ve had enough of it.’

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