Mistake Read online

  I leave the housing estate and turn onto the main road. It’s too early for a commuter build-up, so the drive will be relaxed even though the rain will mean more cars on the road later. I don’t need the satnav to find my first client’s house, because I’ve driven her before. She’s Thea Ryan, the award-winning actress, and she and her husband are going to London this morning for a round of chat shows to promote her new TV series. Desmond Ryan is a playwright, and according to Ms Ryan (I can’t call her Thea to her face, even though she’s asked me to), the series is based around an incident that took place in a remote farmhouse during the Spanish Civil War. It sounds interesting and I’m looking forward to watching it.

  Thea, who’s in her seventies, was one of Dad’s first clients. The production company that had made a short series narrated by her the previous year had always used Dad as a driver, and afterwards she began to book him rather than take taxis when she needed to be driven places. Although her business was irregular, Dad had liked her. He said she was ‘a tough old bird’, which I told him was surely a sexist way of referring to someone who was a national treasure. Dad rolled his eyes and told me to get off my feminist high horse. We both laughed then. I’m not a feminist. I’m not an ‘ist’ of any kind. I’m simply trying to do my best.

  The Ryan house is on the south side of the river, which means having to cross the city, but that isn’t a problem at this time of the morning. And hopefully I’ll have Thea and Desmond at the airport long before it becomes an issue. I never drive through Dublin in rush hour if I can avoid it. Stop-start driving is far too stressy. But I enjoy driving through the centre when it’s almost deserted. I’m a city girl and always have been. I like streets and houses and shops and buildings of every shape and size. I like knowing that there are people all around me. I like the buzz. The promise that anything can happen.

  I arrive outside the old red-brick house in the chichi suburb of Rathgar twenty-five minutes after setting out. Usually I text clients to say I’m waiting outside, but almost as soon as I pull up at the kerb, the brightly painted front door opens and I see both Thea and her husband framed in the light of the hallway.

  I get out of the car and take an umbrella from the boot. It has a vivid pattern of tropical palms and flamingos and is a vibrant splash of colour in the grey morning.

  ‘What are you doing!’ cries Thea as I make my way up the tiled pathway. ‘We’re on our way. There’s no need for you to get wet.’

  ‘Or you,’ I say, holding the umbrella over her. ‘By the way, this is your umbrella. You left it behind the last time. I did ask you if you had everything,’ I add. ‘I didn’t see it when I looked because it was under the seat.’

  ‘Oh, I’m hopeless with brollies,’ says Thea cheerfully. ‘I leave them everywhere! Desmond has his today.’

  Desmond, a tall, patrician man with an amazingly full head of almost white hair, holds up a black telescopic model in a faux-leather case.

  ‘Honestly,’ I say. ‘Let me get you both to the car. You might need that umbrella for London and it would be better to keep it dry.’

  They concede the point, although Desmond remarks that he should be escorting me, not the other way around.

  ‘Roxy is a modern woman with a career of her own,’ says Thea as they settle into their seats. ‘She doesn’t need men fussing over her.’

  I can’t help smiling when she says this, although the reality is, I don’t have a career of my own. Driving the Mercedes is therapy, not a career choice. And I’ve no idea how long I’ll keep doing it.

  ‘ID, mobiles, credit cards?’ It’s a question I always ask on the way to the airport. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who forget at least one of those items.

  Desmond assures me that they’ve got everything and then Thea asks me about Mum. I reply that she’s doing well, which, thinking about the shadows under her eyes this morning, I hope is true.

  Some clients like to talk and some prefer to travel in silence. Thea is a talker, although from time to time she studies a script in the car. On those occasions she tells me not to feel insulted about being ignored. I would never feel insulted by Thea Ryan, who was very kind when I first drove her after Dad’s diagnosis. She asked lots of questions about his treatment and the prognosis. They could have been intrusive, but coming from Thea, they weren’t. And because everyone else was sort of tiptoeing around his illness, it was refreshing, if a little daunting to have to talk about it. She sent the most enormous wreath to the funeral. Mum was very touched.

  ‘I’m sure it’s still raw for your mum,’ she says now. ‘It takes time to grieve and these days we don’t allow enough space for it. We like to sweep it all under the carpet and pretend we’re perfectly fine the next week. But we’re not. The problem with today’s world is that we don’t allow ourselves time to recover from anything. It’s crazy.’

  I can’t help agreeing with her. Sometimes it seems impossible to believe Dad has gone forever. I’ll walk into the house and expect to hear his cheery ‘hello, honey’ and see his jacket hung over the kitchen chair as it always was. The realisation that I won’t is like a knife cutting through my heart.

  Thea then asks after me and I tell her I’m fine, which is obviously a lie because I’m not. She doesn’t say any more, however, instead asking Desmond about their agenda for the day. It’s all interviews and publicity for the new series. Desmond wrote it and Thea is starring in it, and I gather it’s the first time they’ve worked together in years. It sounds glamorous and exciting and it’s nice to have a bit of that in the car. Most of my clients are businessmen in suits, which isn’t one bit glamorous or exciting.

  ‘Excellent timing,’ says Thea as I stop at the drop-off point. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m collecting you next Monday evening, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Desmond nods at me.

  ‘Best of luck in London.’ I retrieve the cases from the boot and hold the umbrella over my two clients. ‘I’ll be watching you on the chat shows.’

  The national treasure gives me a quick peck on the cheek, which isn’t usually part of my farewell to clients, but with Thea Ryan it seems entirely appropriate.

  ‘You’re a dear,’ she says. ‘We’ll see you back here on Monday. Hang on to my umbrella till then.’

  ‘I will,’ I assure her. ‘One last check that you have everything.’

  Both of them assure me that they’re good to go, and I wait beside the Merc until they’ve successfully negotiated their way into the terminal building. Then I get back into the driver’s seat and start the engine again.

  I’ve managed my bookings so that my next client is a pickup from the airport, but because Thea and Desmond are leaving from Terminal 2 and the nutritionist and celebrity cook Gina Hayes is arriving at Terminal 1, I have to circle around to park nearby. Gina’s flight is due to touch down in about an hour, and although Mum’s house is only ten kilometres away, the traffic will certainly be building up now, which makes it smarter to park and have a coffee at the airport rather than go home, even if it means I won’t see Tom and Mica until later. I don’t like not being there for them first thing, but it can’t be helped.

  I walk into the terminal and make straight for the coffee shop near the arrival gates. I’m desperately in need of caffeine and sugar – let’s be honest, despite whatever health benefits it’s supposed to have, hot water and lemon is an utterly useless way of starting the day. I’m pretty sure I once read that an enormous fry-up is good for you first thing in the morning, something that really appeals to me. I find it hard to believe, though, because the food I like is usually on the banned list. I’d love a sausage and rasher right now. Instead, I order a cappuccino and a muffin, which is probably worse. All the same, the aroma of the coffee is almost enough to revive me. Once I’ve taken a gulp of the cappuccino and a bite of the muffin, I open my iPad and begin to scroll through my Facebook timeline.

  I stop at the picture of Dave and the kids that I posted a few months ago. They’re all dr
essed in football gear, the strip of the local club the children play for. Both their teams had won a tournament in their age groups and they’re posing with their trophies. Tom is standing in front of Dave, one foot on a football, his replica cup in his hand. Mica is beside him, holding hers aloft. Someone who’s clearly not in the know about our marital situation has commented on it, which has driven it up my feed, and I feel a real pain in my heart when I recall how happy we were that day. I wonder if there’s a chance we can ever be happy again. Having said that, Dave and I are still Facebook friends. Possibly that’s more important than still being married to each other – which we still are on Facebook too. Neither of us has changed our status to ‘it’s complicated’. But it is complicated, even if Dave doesn’t think so. In his view he made a mistake and he’s sorry for it. He knows that being caught in the middle of his mistake was the killer blow. But he thinks I should forgive him. For his sake. For mine. And for the children.

  Forgive and forget. Or walk away. The pendulum keeps swinging between the two. One of these days it’ll have to stop. I still don’t know where.

  Dave called around to Mum’s as soon as he finished work that day so that he could apologise properly to me, as he put it. I didn’t want to see him, but Mum told me it would be wrong not to. She hustled Tom and Mica out of the living room, telling them that she wanted to get some McDonald’s to take away. As Mickey D’s is very much an occasional treat in our house, they were both thrilled by this. But I felt terrible that a day after burying her husband, my mother had to put my needs ahead of her own.

  I said this to Dave.

  ‘Mothers always do that,’ he told me. ‘Yours is no different.’

  ‘Well, now that you’ve driven her out of her home, you’d better say whatever it is you want to say.’

  ‘There’s no need to be like this,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you I’m sorry and I am, Roxy. I really am. I know it was wrong. And I swear to you, I’ve never, ever been unfaithful to you before. Being with Julie was . . .’ He paused. ‘Meaningless.’

  ‘It isn’t meaningless to me.’

  ‘I get that,’ said Dave. ‘I do. I was a dick. I’m sorry.’

  He looked sorry. He sounded sorry. I believed him about that.

  ‘I’m angry and disgusted,’ I told him. ‘That you could even think about it.’

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘And that excuses it?’

  ‘No. But it explains it. I wouldn’t have bothered with her otherwise.’

  I felt a sudden pang for Julie, whose own marriage had broken down after a couple of years because her husband had cheated on her with a colleague. And then I clamped down on any sympathy I might have had for her, because she should have known what it was like.

  ‘Come home,’ said Dave. ‘I miss you and I miss the kids. I wouldn’t have gone near Julie if I hadn’t been missing you.’

  I listened to his male logic without saying a word. On the one hand, I could feel myself wavering. Understanding, even. But on the other, five days on my own wouldn’t have made me jump into bed with another man. And if Dave’s explanations were to be believed, Julie had spent the whole night in our house. They’d undoubtedly been at it before I’d come home. So they’d done it more than once. I don’t know if I would’ve forgiven once more quickly. But twice. Or maybe more. That wasn’t a moment. That was premeditated.

  The pendulum had swung towards walking away.

  ‘I can’t come home,’ I said. ‘I’m too angry.’

  ‘I understand you might need a bit of time,’ he said. ‘But the children need their dad.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before,’ I said.

  ‘What do you want from me, Roxy?’ he asked. ‘I’ll do anything. I truly will.’

  I believed that, too. Dave is a good man. He made a mistake. He has to pay for it, but according to another one of the cheating-husband articles, though a desire for punishment is understandable, it’s not necessarily the solution.

  The pendulum swung back towards forgive and forget.

  ‘I need some time,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry. But I do.’

  ‘Please don’t take too long,’ he said.

  And then he left.

  I didn’t hear from him for two days. Then he sent a long, rambling text (from the local pub, I reckon) all about how much he still loved me and how he hadn’t seen Julie Halpin since and if he did he’d turn his back on her and he was sorry, sorry, sorry.

  He didn’t say anything about me coming home, but he turned up at Mum’s house on Saturday to take the kids for the day. He also had an enormous bunch of flowers in his arms.

  ‘The flowers are for you. Football in the park for them,’ he said as he handed them to me. ‘The children can stay with me tonight. You could too, if you wanted.’

  I buried my face in the flowers, which was a bit stupid as I immediately started to sneeze.

  ‘For one night?’ I put down the flowers and blew my nose.

  ‘If it made a difference.’

  I shook my head. He took the children and I stayed home alone with my mum. She divided the flowers between three different vases.

  And that’s how it’s been since Rodeo Night. He texts me every day to say how sorry he is. All of his texts include a sad-face emoji and half a dozen hearts. Sometimes he adds a soppy romantic video. He asks me to come home. I delete the texts and videos and say that I need more time. He tells me I can take as much time as I like, but he needs me back. He needs the children to come home. He tells me that he’ll never be alone in a room with another woman again. He says how much he loves me. And I always end up replying once again that I need more time. So far he hasn’t asked how much more. But sooner or later he will. Sooner or later he’ll stop being sorry and sending the videos and he’ll get pissed off at me. I know he will, because that’s how I’d feel too. And that means I can’t swing with the pendulum forever. I have to make a decision about the rest of my life.

  But no matter how good I’m supposed to be at decision-making, this is still one I don’t want to make.

  Debs, my closest friend, is trying to be even-handed about it. She says that all men are fools but that Dave is one of the better men even if he did do a very foolish thing. I know she’s right. But I still can’t cope with how let-down I feel. And although I truly want to forgive him, I’m not ready to do it.

  I continue to stare at the photograph of my children and their father. They belong with him just as much as with me. Children need two parents. But even as my finger hovers indecisively over the message icon to type the words ‘I’m coming home’, I pull it away.

  Why can’t I accept that it was a moment of madness on his part? Why is it that every time I think I’m ready to let it go, another wave of pure rage washes over me and leaves me shaking? Why can’t I simply forgive him? But why should I simply forgive him? He’s broken my heart, after all.

  My life used to be sorted. It might not have been glamorous or exciting, but it was perfect. Yet in the space of a few weeks, I no longer have the two men who meant the most to me in the world. I’m not living in the home that I love. All the certainties I’ve built up over the years have come tumbling down, leaving me bereft and bewildered. I’m not the person I used to be. Right now, I don’t know who I am any more.

  An announcement about a delayed flight jolts me back to my job. I glance at my watch, then check Gina’s flight status. The plane has landed, so I type the name ‘Gina Hayes’ in a large, bold font onto my iPad and go to stand in the already crowded arrivals hall.

  ‘Roxy, sweetheart, how are things?’

  I’ve wormed my way towards the barrier and it’s another driver, Eric Fallon, who greets me. Meeting passengers at the airport is a bread-and-butter business and the drivers get to know each other. On one occasion a terrible thunderstorm delayed every flight coming into Dublin, and I spent nearly three hours in the coffee shop with Eric. It was one of my first jobs after Dad’s diagnosis, and Eric, who’s almost th
e same age as him, was kind and understanding.

  ‘Good,’ I reply. ‘Which flight are you meeting?’

  ‘The nine a.m. from Paris,’ he says. ‘A suit.’ He tilts his iPad towards me. The name on it is Ivo Lehane. ‘Heading to the convention centre. Something to do with ethical business models.’ He snorts.

  I smile at him. Like my dad, Eric doesn’t believe that big business is ethical. He has a deep mistrust of anyone who wears a suit, and is wary of people who try to give him investment advice. Eric was burned in the financial crisis back in 2008. Ever since then, he’s become an anti-establishment figure, having decided that nobody looks out for people like him.

  I agree with him, at least in part. The system is rigged against the ordinary person. We don’t get a say in anything. Laws are passed by rich people for rich people and there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m not anything like as radical as Eric, who spent much of the recession involved in anti-austerity protest marches and was even, briefly, a member of a new political party. But I get really angry when politicians imply that if you’re struggling, it’s your own fault. I’m worried about what might happen to me and the children if I don’t go back to Dave, because that would make me a single-parent family. I’ve no idea how I could possibly afford a home of my own. It’s a mess and it’s not my fault. But I’m pretty sure that some people would be happy to blame me anyhow.

  The doors from the baggage area to the arrivals hall slide open and a stream of passengers walk through. Eric and I hold our iPads up so that our clients can spot us. Neither Gina Hayes nor Ivo Lehane is in the initial group and we lower them again. After a brief lull, more people appear, and eventually a tall man in a charcoal suit walks over to Eric and identifies himself as Ivo. I should be so lucky as to get a client who looks like Patrick Dempsey in his prime! Dr McDreamy is totally wasted on Eric. (I used to love Patrick in Grey’s Anatomy . I was gutted when they killed him off.) Then I laugh at myself for caring whether my clients are as good-looking as TV stars. They don’t notice me and I don’t really notice them. Not after they get into the car, at any rate.