Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

CLAUDIA CARROLL

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

An division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2011

Copyright © Claudia Carroll 2011

Claudia Carroll asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

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Source ISBN: 9781847562104

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007338566

Version: 2016-09-19

Dedication

For Frank Mackey, with love. This is your year Frankie and don’t forget it!

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Romania.

Dorothy Parker,

Not So Deep as a Well (1937)

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Winter

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Spring

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Summer

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Autumn

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Winter

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

Thoreau said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Course he wasn’t to know it, but he was actually talking about me.

Falling in love is easy, you see; any idiot can do it. It’s falling out of love that’s hard.

It takes courage, brinkmanship and a certain degree of recklessness, not just with your own heart, but with someone else’s too. Someone else whose whole existence once meant more to you than your own ever did.

And if you’ve ever sat across the kitchen table from the person you’re supposed to be living happily ever after with and wondered where in hell the spark went…well, then you’ll know exactly what I’m going through right now.

I’m looking silently across the breakfast table at Dan and trying to pinpoint when exactly we first became such a disconnected couple. And I just don’t get it. When did we first start swapping ‘I’ for ‘we’? Dan and I used to be able to have unspoken conversations together. We used to finish each other’s sentences. We used to finish each other’s food. For God’s sake, there was a time when we’d even skip breakfast altogether in favour of an extra hour, tangled up together in bed, making love in a daze of exhausted pleasure.

Now I’m wondering if I sat here dressed like Lady Gaga, singing all the words and doing all the moves from the ‘Telephone’ video, might he even look up from his Times’ Sudoku puzzle? Because the sad truth is this: like wearing nappies as a baby, or the lost City of Atlantis…any love life we once shared is little more than a hazy memory now, as we sleep side by side, like stone figures on a tomb.

The thing about this house though, is that avoidance is generally considered to be a good thing. A sign of deep maturity and awareness. We both know that we’re in a minefield and have been for the longest time; so on the very rare occasions when we find ourselves alone together, we sidestep any embarrassment by just tiptoeing carefully around each other. On the principle that if you don’t acknowledge or talk about a thing then it’ll just quietly go away all by itself.

Trouble is that all this living in denial is physically starting to give me heartburn and I honestly think I’ll scream if I don’t get to articulate what’s going on inside my head. Which is that the current state of our marriage is a steady beep emerging from a heart monitor showing a clear, straight line.

We have officially flatlined.

I take a sip of tea and unconsciously stare over at Dan, my mind in whirling, agonising turmoil but he’s too engrossed in the paper to even notice.

Honest to God, if you were to look at us from the outside, having a civilised breakfast, utterly comfortable in silence, you’d swear our lives were perfect. Dan and Annie, Annie and Dan. Even our names go together. We’ve been together for almost half of our lives, which I know makes us sound like one of those silver-haired, middle-aged couples with porcelain veneers that you’d see in an ad for stair lifts, and yet we’re not. Both of us are only twenty eight. But I can barely remember back to a time when we weren’t a couple.

At fifteen, he was my first boyfriend, I was his first girlfriend, and now, at an age when most of our old pals from our old life in the city are just beginning to think of settling down and getting married, here’s me and Dan like the Mount Rushmore of couples; utterly unchanged from the outside, even after all these years.

Dan reaches out for another slice of toast, but then his tanned, handsome face crinkles with worry as he catches my eye.

‘All right, love?’

I nod back, but stay firmly focused on the Pop-Tart in front of me.

There’s so much that I need to say to him and I haven’t the first clue where to start.

I want to tell him that even though the day has barely started, I already know exactly how it’ll pan out. It’ll be virtually identical to yesterday and the day before and the day before that. I’ll spend the morning working at a job that I don’t particularly like for next to no money, just to get me out of this house but most importantly of all, to keep myself busy. Because busy is always good. Busy means less time to think.

And on the way there, I’ll probably meet one of our neighbours, Bridie McCoy, who’ll chat to me in minute detail about that most gripping and urgent of subjects – her bunions. Like she always does. Then, when I get to the local book shop where I’ve got a part-time job, my boss will joshingly ask me the same question that she always does, day in, day out. Now that I’m pushing thirty, and now that Dan and I have moved from the city into his family’s big country house, when exactly are we planning to start a family? And I will do what I always do: an adroit subject change by asking her whether she fancies Jaffa Cakes or HobNobs with her mug of tea this morning. Never fails me.

Then by the time I get back home, Dan’s mother will have dropped in, letting herself in with her own door key like she always does. She’ll comb through room after room, lecturing me on how the good table in the dining room needs to be polished daily, or else, my particular favourite, the correct way to clean out the Aga in the kitchen. And I will smile through gritted teeth and remind myself that The Moorings is really her house, not mine, so, in fairness to her, she’s entitled.

Then later on in the afternoon, Lisa Ledbetter will make an appearance to the soundtrack of thunderclaps and a cacophonous minor chord being bashed out on an organ in my head. She’ll charge in and do what she always does: sit at the kitchen table drinking coffee while moaning about her husband’s recent redundancy. Like this was a state of events he’d brought about on purpose with the sole intention of annoying her. Lisa, by the way, is a local gal and old friend of Dan’s from when they were kids growing up together. We’re roughly the same age and its received wisdom around here that she and I are each other’s greatest pals.

But let me dispel that notion right now and tell you that any real friendship between us is a complete and utter myth. Lisa, you see, is a funny combination of needy, vulnerable and demanding; one of those people who’s fully prepared to allow everyone around her to do everything for her. Babysitting, cooking meals for her and her kids; you name it. From time to time, she even lets Dan help out with her household bills. And has absolutely no problem doing this, either.

So I’ll sit and listen and sympathise and nod my head at appropriate moments, like I always do. All while mentally steeling myself not to allow her to suck all the life and energy out of me, like she always does. If people can be divided into either drains or radiators, then Lisa is most definitely a drain. So much so that I’ve silently nicknamed her The Countess Dracula.

Later on Jules, Dan’s flaky younger sister, will breeze in, raid the fridge and then make a little cockpit for herself around the TV, surrounded by beer, nachos and last night’s leftovers. She’s just dropped out of college and doesn’t seem particularly bothered about finding something else to do, like, God forbid, looking for an actual job or anything. But she’s all the time in the world to flake out in our living room, watching all the afternoon soaps, back to back. Exactly like a lodger, except one that doesn’t pay any rent.

Don’t get me wrong though, this will actually be the brightest part of my day, mainly because I like Jules. She’s by far my favourite person round here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have any real friends here at all, just people who don’t hate me. Jules is dippy and quirky and fun to be around, like she’s got too much personality for one person yet not quite enough for two.

So you get my drift. Dan’s family and friends just come and go as and when it suits them.

Like weather. Or bloat.

But it’s all part of the joys of small town country life, it seems. And here, in the tiny Waterford village of Stickens (its real name, look it up if you don’t believe me…makes me feel marginally less bad about calling it ‘The Sticks’), privacy is an utterly unheard of concept. Honestly, if I as much as sneeze leaving the house one morning, by lunchtime at least three well-intentioned locals would have called to ask how my terrible bout of swine flu was.

No secrets in Stickens.

In fairness to Dan, he grew up here so he knows everyone and thrives on the humdrum, everyday minutiae of village life. He’s the local vet, by the way, just like his father was before him and in turn, his father was before him too. And it’s a pure vocation for Dan: he loves, loves, loves his job and is one of those people who can’t for a split second understand why anyone would possibly want to do anything else.

But when his dad passed away over three years ago…well, that’s when the trouble all started really. Dan inherited this crumbling old family manor house where the surgery is, which was way too big and unmanageable for his mother to live in anyway. So she and Jules moved into a smaller apartment in the village, which meant that there was nothing for us but to move from our old, happy life in Dublin and settle here, into Dan’s family home. It wasn’t just the right thing to do; it was the only thing to do.

Thing about Dan, you see, is that he’s officially The Nicest Man On The Planet. Everyone says so. It takes time, trial and error to creep into his affections, but once there, you’re there for life. Anyway, after his father died, naturally he was anxious to be as close as possible to his mother and sister, both of whom he continues to support financially. A bit like a one-man welfare state.

But that’s Dan for you; helping others is his Kryptonite.

We’ll make this work, I had said to him supportively at the time, even though it effectively meant putting my own acting career on hold, as we packed up our independence in the city and got ready to move. Sure as long as we’re together, we can make anything work, I said reassuringly. And if a job comes up for me, I’ll just do the long commute back and forth to Dublin.

Because our marriage comes first. Doesn’t it?

But, like I said, that was well over three years ago and since then, the goalposts have shifted. Considerably. For starters, I’m finding it far, far tougher than I’d ever have thought, hauling myself up and down from Dublin every time there’s a sniff of a job. So to keep myself busy, I’ve done just about every gig in The Sticks that comes my way. Given the odd drama workshop to kids in the local school, worked part-time at the local florist’s, you name it, I’ve given it a whirl.

But the hard, cold fact is that I’ve been treading water rather than really loving what I’m doing, knowing in my heart that if it’s acting work I really want, then I need to be in the city, where all the big job opportunities are. Not to mention where all my old friends are. We stay in touch, of course – we text and phone and email and Skype is my new best friend…but it’s just not the same as seeing people all the time, is it?

I’m constantly begging/pleading/nagging my old pals to come and visit, even just for a weekend, and in fairness, most of them have done at one time or another. But the thing about The Sticks though, is that it doesn’t exactly offer all that much in the way of nightlife. Apart from a couple of pubs where the average age profile is about eighty and the main topic of conversation among the sages of the snug is still the Civil War, there’s not a whole lot else on offer.

Bear in mind that you’re talking about a tiny village where the main tourist attractions are a Spar newsagents and a large clock in the middle of Main Street, so, unsurprisingly, repeat visits from my Dublin buddies tend to be few and far between.

But it does my heart good though, to keep in touch with our old circle. I love hearing all my girlfriends’ tales from the city, of how well they’re all doing in their careers and most of all, hearing their stories direct from life at the great dating coalface. And even if their romances don’t go exactly according to plan, at least they’re all out there, having fun/ breaking hearts/ having their hearts broken in turn/picking themselves up and getting back in the race…just like you’re supposed to be doing at our age.

Sometimes I’ll see them all looking at me, like I’m some prematurely middle-aged housewife in a Cath Kidston apron with matching tablecloths and they’ll say, ‘But you’re married! Why aren’t you at home, getting fat?’

And I’ll want to tell them the truth; that the whole reason I got married was to grow old with someone and not because of them. But instead, I’ll smile and laugh and make a joke and say that Victorian virgin brides in arranged marriages saw more of life than I did before I walked down the aisle. Then they’ll all jolly me along by reminding me that I got lucky, because I didn’t just marry a great guy, I married the holy grail of men, didn’t I?

And the heartbreaking thing is that it’s all true – I did.

It’s just that the grass is always greener on the other side of the M50 motorway, that’s all.

I often think that life here is far, far easier for Dan, who’s surrounded by his family, along with friends he’s known since he was in nappies and has grown up with. Some people live a life that’s already been planned out perfectly for them, as inescapable as a circle. And that’s Dan and he’s perfectly content with that. But the truth is that after three long years here, the claustrophobia is slowly starting to get to me. It’s like every time I glance in the mirror I see a woman who looks like it’s raining inside of her. Crushed under the weight of my own future.

Because I have deep grievances with my life here that over time, feel like they’ve barnacled permanently onto my skull. In spite of all my super-human efforts to fit in and to be a good wife and half-decent daughter- and sister-in-law…I swear to God, there are days when I physically feel like I’m being smothered. That I can’t breathe. That I’m slowly being asphyxiated as surely as if someone had tied a plastic Tesco’s bag over my head.

Worse still, that I’m going to go to my grave with an unlived life still in my veins.

Even the clinking sound of Dan’s coffee mug as he rests it on a saucer is almost enough to make me want to scream. There’s so much I need to talk to him about and yet we’re sitting here in total silence. Like an old married couple that ran out of things to say to each other years ago.

Another, tacked-on worry pops into my mind unbidden; is this what we’re going to be like twenty years from now? Because as far as I can see, that’s the road we’re headed down. Rare enough that we even get to eat a meal together given the eighteen-hour days he’s been working for as long as I can remember. Rare enough that we get time alone together at all, given that his family still consider this to be their home and just breeze in and out whenever it suits them. Not to mention his work colleagues, who treat our house as a combination of a twenty-four-hour free canteen-cum-low-grade hotel. But to think that we’re wasting this precious opportunity to talk, really talk, with him rattling away at the shagging paper and me restlessly glowering off into space…

Dan looks up and catches my eye again. A tiny sliver of hope; he used to know my mind nearly better than I did myself.; time was when he could read my subconscious as easily as an autocue. Maybe, just maybe, he’s noticed that his wife is slowly drowning right before his eyes and will throw me some kind of lifeline. Maybe, after all my fretting and stressing, he and I are something that can be fixed after all…

‘Annie?’

‘Yes?’

Come on, Dan, come on…meet me halfway here…

‘You won’t forget to pick up that fungicidal cream from the chemist for the cat’s ringworm today, will you?’

I do not befeckinglieve it.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

When I don’t answer, he tosses the paper aside and for a split second looks at me again; really looks at me this time, his soft, black eyes now full of concern.

‘Everything OK?’

And like the moral coward that I am, I back down.

To be polite, I freeze frame a watery smile onto my face and even allow the grin to reach all the way up to my eyes.

‘Everything’s fine.’

But I’m lying.

Everything is so not fine.

WINTER

Chapter One

OK, two things you need to know about me: firstly, I’m really not the sort of person to mortgage my entire future on a whim. Secondly, if life in The Sticks has taught me anything, it’s this: the lower you keep your expectations, the less likely you are to get let down. And above all, do not, repeat, do not, expect miracles to happen in this neck of the woods. Long and unbelievably boring conversations with Audrey, my mother-in-law, about the correct way to make a poinsettia entirely out of icing for the Christmas cake, yes, but miracles…no, sorry, love. ’Fraid not. Not in this neck of the woods.

So when the phone calls start coming from about eleven-thirty in the morning onwards, you’ll get some idea of how utterly, unbelievably staggered I am by this bolt from a clear blue sky.

I’m up a ladder in the dusty back room of our local book shop, stacking shelves with copies of a hot, new young adult series which we’re hoping will bring in some badly-needed footfall over Christmas. Because considering it’s only a few weeks off, business is worryingly quiet and so far this morning I’ve already had the owner, Agnes Quinn, who’s been around for approximately as long as the Old Testament, explain to me that she’s really very sorry but she just doesn’t think there’ll be a job for me here after the holidays.

Not her fault of course, she was at pains to explain, people just aren’t spending cash in the same way that they used to…more and more people are buying books online now…Amazon are squeezing her out…rents are too high…recession is still having a massive knock-on effect…blah-di-blah…

I know the story only too well and sympathise accordingly. Try not to worry, I say positively, and look on the bright side. Yes, business is slack I gently tell her, but just think, it’ll give you more time to work on your own book. Her round, puffy cheeks flush at this, as they always do whenever she’s reminded about her as-yet-unfinished magnum opus. It’s a cookbook, by the way. Agnes has spent the last three years eating her way through her granny’s recipes with a view to publication.

‘Anyway, I’m sure you won’t miss working here, will you now, Annie, love?’ she twinkles knowingly at me from where she’s standing over by the till, surveying a shop floor so empty it might as well have tumbleweed rolling through it. ‘Because it’ll mean you’ll have far more time to spend up at The Moorings with your in-laws, won’t it?’

I do what I always do: smile, nod and say nothing.

Then she rips open another cardboard box that’s just been delivered and sighs disappointedly, ‘Oh, look at this. More books.’ In much the same manner as someone who’d been expecting petunias.

Anyway, just then I feel my mobile silently vibrating in my pocket. I ignore it and quietly get back to stacking shelves. Audrey, most likely, ringing from my house to whimper down the phone at me, in her frail, reed-thin, whispery, little-girl voice, like she does every day, even though she knows right well that I’m at work and therefore not supposed to take personal calls.

OK, three possible reasons for her ringing: a) she wants to have a go at me, in her best passive-aggressive way for still not having put up the Christmas tree yet; b) she’s having one of her little ‘turns’ and needs me home urgently, even though I’m at work. Not that she doesn’t have a daughter of her own at her permanent beck and call, who’s unemployed and therefore has far more time on her hands than I do. But somehow, it’s always, always me she’ll call, like I’m some kind of nicotine patch for her nerves.

Or worst of all, point c). Whenever Audrey runs out of things to guilt me out about and yet feels the need to use me as a kind of emotional punch bag, she’ll have a right good nose through the house when I’m not there, then pick on me for making some supposed change to The Moorings behind her back. Any minor shifting around of furniture or rearranging of china on the kitchen dresser by the way, all fall under this category and if I even attempt to deny said change, she’ll usually resurrect one of her favourite old gripes. Namely the fact that I had the outright effrontery to strip the flowery wallpaper from our bedroom wall and paint it plain cream instead. Not a word of a lie, when I first brought her upstairs to proudly show off my handiwork in all my newly-married innocence, honest to God, the woman’s intestines nearly exploded. The local GP had to be called, sedatives had to be administered and to this day, I still haven’t heard the last of it.