Page 31 of Rewrite the Stars
‘Are you sure your parents want me to join them for Christmas dinner?’ Jack asks me as we sit across from each other on the train later that evening. We’re on our way to meet some of his friends in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary), a vibrant, cultural harbour village on the south side of Dublin city where Sarah and Harry Darling live. I hope they aren’t as fancy as their names suggest.
‘Of course I’m sure!’ I tell him, laughing as I picture how flustered my mother will be when serving him his turkey and ham next weekend. ‘You’re definitely a hero in our family right now. In fact, I’ve never seen my parents so excited. The preparations are already underway.’
‘That’s sweet of them,’ he says, rubbing his chin. ‘They’ve been very kind to me, way beyond the call of duty. I was only ever doing my job with your brother.’
I look at him knowingly. He’s done so much more than just his job. He’s been a guiding light in Matthew’s recovery since he came on board shortly after I bumped into him that day in the café. I’ve developed a deep friendship and admiration for this young doctor who treated us all with such care and attention, managing always to shine some positivity and hope in Matthew’s darkest days.
‘It’s like Doctor Doug Ross is coming to visit,’ I tell him, ‘so the finest crockery will be pulled out that day. My mam was a big fan of the seriesER. She thinks you’re like a younger George Clooney in your white coat. I think she’d faint if she ever saw you in green scrubs.’
He looks away shyly and I take a moment to admire him from where I’m sitting across from him. Jack is easy on the eye, there’s no doubt about that. He’s neat, he’s tidy, he’s well-groomed and impeccably dressed, always. He’s sexy in his scrubs, which he wears when on surgical duty at a different hospital, he’s hunky in his casual pale blue shirt that he wears now under a tailored black jacket and he’s equally handsome in a T-shirt when he’s just been to the gym. His short brown hair, charming blue eyes and wholesome smile could light up a room, and anyone who’s met us both lately believe we’re a match made in heaven. The doctor and the teacher – we look good together, we laugh a lot and he’s invested months of his career in saving my brother’s life.
So why do I still feel like there’s something missing?
Sophie and Harry Darling, Harry and Sophie Darling.
I go over and over the names of Jack’s friends in my head, desperately hoping I don’t get them wrong when I see them later. I’m hopeless with names and these two sound like they belong in the royal family, but I’m looking forward to meeting people from Jack’s world. So far in our ‘relationship’ it’s been all about my family, especially Matthew.
Psychologist Sophie Darling, née Walsh, is a lifelong friend of Jack’s from boarding school and her husband Harry is an ex rugby player, now a dentist, who moved here from Wales when they married two years ago. We’re going for drinks in an award-winning wine bar, then to dinner in a top seafood restaurant and tonight we’ll stay in Harry and Sophie’s spare room in their apartment they share with their two Yorkshire terriers.
I feel incredibly out of my depth for some reason. I’m a working-class girl from the asshole of nowhere. Maybe it’s just nerves.
‘Do you think we could go for a quick drink somewhere first, you know, before the wine bar?’ I ask Jack, as we whizz past the breath-taking moonlit views of Dublin Bay. The very sight of the Irish Sea, even when it’s only twinkling black in darkness, makes me think of Howth and Tom. It makes me imagine how he and Claire are getting on now, which makes me feel a bit queasy, which makes me feel a bit guilty for even thinking of him when I’m here with someone else – someone who isn’t him … someone who is the total opposite of him in so many ways.
‘We can slip into a pub along the way, no problem at all if that’s what you want?’ Jack says, sensing how uneasy I am.
The train is full of commuters on laptops dressed in dull greys and blacks. As well as my anxiety over meeting ‘the Darlings’, I feel very overdressed with my tea dress, vintage sapphire earrings, extra high heels and funky purple patterned tights. But I reassure myself that I needed to make an effort tonight, plus I should be celebrating.
Matthew is coming home for good. He’s actually coming home at long last. OK, so he’s in a wheelchair and the whole house has had to be adapted to suit his needs, but it’s a fresh start, it’s a new beginning and tonight is the start of the rest of my life.
‘I just feel like I need some Dutch courage before I meet your friends,’ I mutter, a bit mad at myself for feeling in any way out of my depth. ‘Sorry, I won’t be like this every time, I promise.’
‘You have absolutely nothing to worry about, Charlotte, I promise you,’ he says. ‘They are going to love you just as much as I do.’
I ignore that he casually used the ‘L’ word, telling myself that he didn’t mean it in that way, and look out the window onto the darkness of the bay as we fly past, further down the coast. We sit in a comfortable silence until we reach our destination minutes later, then Jack helps me into my faux-fur jacket and my heels click onto the platform, out into the wintry evening. It’s damp and cold but more typical weather for Ireland in comparison to last year’s record-breaking minus figures and snowfall.
I need to keep reminding myself that although tonight will forever stick in my mind as the anniversary of the night I got to know Tom Farley in the snow outside Pip’s Bar, it’s also the same night that I first met Jack Malone, and he is who I’m with right now.
I need to do as Jack once told me and stay focused in the here and now and try and enjoy my evening. I need to stay in the present and let go of my longing for what could have happened in the past.
Chapter Eight
Dublin, March 2017
‘You have got to be joking! What?How?’
I lean both my hands on the island unit in mine and Jack’s city centre apartment and stare at the photo in front of me as my sister stares atme, waiting on my reaction. It’s the sunniest March in almost a hundred years so I’m dressed like a summer’s day, and I was just about to launch into some spring cleaning with only some old-school Bruce Springsteen for company when my sister dropped round with a bombshell that has hit me like a wrecking ball.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she says, ‘but I nearly choked when I saw it in the salon! I had to come straight round to show you.’
I hold the magazine closer to get a better look as Emily rambles on.
‘I mean, there I was, casually flicking through whatever magazine I could get my hands on to pass the time when I almost jumped out of the chair! Have you even heard from him lately? Did you have any clue he was actuallyfamous?!’
I shake my head, then nod, then shake it again, still squinting and staring in disbelief at the glossy image of ‘BlindGeneration lead singer Tom Farley and his actress girlfriend Joanie Brown at the premiere ofFifty Shades Darkerin London’ a few weeks before. On the same page is the movie’s main star Dakota Johnson in a striking Alexander McQueen dress alongside the very handsome Jamie Dornan, but all I can see is Tom in his three-piece suit, slicked-back hair and with a girl on his arm who looks distinctly like … oh my God she looks exactly like—
‘Do you see what I see?’ asked Emily, nodding like one of those dogs you see in the back window of a car. Her eyes are like dinner plates.
‘Do you think she looks like—’
