Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

This, by the way, would be the one, single decorative change that I’ve made since moving into the house; the first and the last. How could I have even thought of doing such an insensitive thing? I’ll never forget Audrey whimpering at me, laid prostrate on our sofa like Elizabeth Barrett Browning having an attack of the vapours and glaring accusingly at me with her pale, fishy eyes. No messing, all the woman was short of was a hoop skirt, a cold compress on her forehead and a jar of smelling salts. Not only had I completely destroyed the look of that whole room, she sniffled…but did I even appreciate that the wallpaper had been there since she first came to The Moorings as a bride?

Ohh…way back in the early eighteenth century, most likely.

The Moorings, I should tell you, is a vast, seven-bedroomed crumbling old mansion house; relentlessly Victorian, with huge, imposing granite walls all around it – exactly the kind of location that film scouts would kill to use on an Agatha Christie-Poirot murder mystery and decorated in a style best described as early Thatcher. Which is a crying shame, because with a bit of TLC and if I was really allowed to get my hands on the place, I know it could actually be stunning. I often compare it to Garbo in a bad dress; you can see the bone structure’s there, if you could only strip away all the crap. All the house’s features are intact and perfect: the coving, the brickwork, the stunning, sixteen-foot high plastered ceilings, but layered in a blanket of someone else’s old-fashioned, long-faded taste. With the result that I permanently feel like I’m a guest in my own home.

From the outside though, it’s so scarily impressive that the very first time Dan took me here, aged fifteen, I remember joking to him that it was half posh mansion, half the kind of place you’d go to get your passport stamped. And he laughed and little did I think it would one day be my home.

Trouble is that ever since Dan’s father died, Audrey, Queen Victoria-like, has pretty much wanted the house to remain exactly as it was when he was alive – a living mausoleum. Right down to his boots in the outside shelter which are still in exactly the same place he’d always left them. And his favourite armchair, that no one is allowed to sit in, ever, just where he liked it to be – in the drawing room, right by the window.

Grief does funny things to people, my Dan, Dan Junior, gently reminded me after the whole wallpaper-gate debacle, so of course I apologised ad nauseam and solemnly vowed not to do anything that might bring on a repeat performance. Nothing to do but bite my tongue and support Audrey for as long as she needed. Let’s both just be patient with her, Dan said to me; together we’ll help get her though this.

Course that was around the same time that he buggered off to start working eighteen-hour days and started communicating with me via Post-it notes stuck on the fridge door, telling me not to bother waiting up for him, that he wouldn’t be home. And of course, Jules was in college at the time and just couldn’t have been arsed doing anything.

Leaving me alone, to handle Audrey all by myself.

You try living inside a memorial with a mother-in-law who still considers it to be her home, a husband who’s never around and who, when he is, barely bothers to speak to you anymore.

Go on, I dare you.

Anyway, back to the book shop, where my mobile keeps on ringing and ringing and still I keep ignoring it, wondering for the thousandth time if Audrey has any conception of basic office etiquette – that you can’t take phone calls when you’re supposed to be working. But then, that’s the kernel of the problem; she doesn’t consider what I do to come under the banner heading of ‘work’. No, in her book, being a vet like Dan is an actual hardcore, proper ‘job’, what I do is just arsing around. Just in case, God forbid, I got any kind of notions about myself.

By lunchtime, business is so slack that poor, worried old Agnes tells me I can finish up early for the day. In fact apart from a lost backpacker sticking his head through the door looking for directions and Mrs Henderson waddling in from across the street, not to buy, but to give out that she can’t pronounce the place names in any of Stieg Larsson’s books, we haven’t had any other footfall the entire morning.

Mrs Henderson, by the way, is something of a crime book aficionado and she drops into the shop pretty much every day to tell us the endings of whichever thriller she’s stuck into at the moment. Well, either that or to describe all the twists and red herrings, and then to tell us exactly how she saw them coming from miles off.

Anyroadup, between one thing and another, it’s just coming up to one o’clock before I even get a chance to check any of the messages on my mobile.

To my astonishment, not a single one of which is from Audrey.

A Dublin number, one that hasn’t flashed up on my phone, since, oooh, like the George Bush administration. One Hilary Williams. Otherwise known as…drum roll for dramatic effect…my agent.

OK, the CliffsNotes on Hilary: firstly, she wasn’t exactly a fan of my decision to move to The Sticks. In fact, she’s a sixty-something, bra-burning, first-generation feminist of the Germaine Greer school and the very idea that I’d sacrifice a budding theatre career to, perish the thought, actually put my marriage first, was almost enough to have her lying down in a darkened room taking tablets and listening to dolphin music.

Secondly, her nickname is Fag Ash Hil, on account of the fact that she smokes upwards of sixty a day and climbing. She’s the only person I know who actually went out and organised protest marches against the smoking ban, and among her clients, it’s an accepted rule that you don’t even think about crossing the threshold of her office without at least two packs tucked under your oxter for her.

Hence she normally sounds deep, throaty and gravelly, a bit like a man in fact, but…not today. Four messages, in a voice designed to wrest people from dreams and all rising in hysteria till by the last one she sounds like she’s left Earth’s gravity field and is now orbiting somewhere around Pluto.

‘Oh for GOD’S SAKE, ANNIE, why are you not returning any of my calls?! Can you please stop please stop role-playing Mrs James Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small and kindly get back to me? Like…NOW?’

This is delivered, by the way, like an edict from the Vatican. I listen to what she has to say, call her back toot suite…then hop straight into my car.

And faster than a bullet, I’m on the long, long road to Dublin.

Sticking to the speed limit, it generally takes the guts of three hours to get from The Sticks to Dublin and believe me the drive is not for the faint-hearted. It’s motorway for a lot of it, but you still have to navigate a good fifty plus miles before that on narrow, twisting, secondary roads that would nearly put the heart crossways in you. Anyway, anyway, anyway, fuelled by nothing more than adrenaline, I manage to a) drive at breakneck speed, b) not get caught by the cops and c) even beat my own personal record of getting to the city in under two-and-a-half hours flat, with my foot to the floor and my heart walloping the entire way.

I finally arrive in Dublin late in the wintry afternoon, avoiding the worst of the rush-hour traffic and miraculously managing to find a space in a handy twenty-four hour car park, right in the middle of town and conveniently close to Hilary’s office. In my sticky, sweat-soaked, heart palpitation-y state I amaze myself by even remembering to pick up a few obligatory packets of Marlboro Lights for her.

‘Annie, get your arse in here and sit down!’ is her greeting, which might sound a bit harsh, but coming from Hil, can actually be taken as a term of endearment. I obediently do as I’m told and head inside, dutifully handing over the cigarettes as we air kiss.

It’s been over three years since I set foot in this office and at least a year since we last spoke, so it’s comforting to see, in spite of my being out of circulation for so long, that precious little has changed round here. Hil still has the same grey spiky hair, the same grey trouser suits, same matching grey skin tone. Same sharp tongue, same short fuse. Oh and she still chain smokes like it’s food.

And another thing, with her there’s never small-talk of any description. Never a hello-how-are-you-how’s-your-life-been. Hil, you see, favours the Ryanair approach to her work: no frills, no extras. Time is money so it’s always straight down to business. She plonks down behind her desk, dumps a thick-looking script down in front of me, then leans forward so she can scrutinise me, up close and personal.

‘Good, good,’ she nods, taking in my appearance as thoroughly as a consultant plastic surgeon while lighting up at the same time.

‘Ehh…sorry, Hilary,…what’s good?’

‘You still look the same way you do in your CV headshot. Living the life of a countrified recluse hasn’t altered your appearance that much. Which at least is something.’

All I can gather from that comment is that she half-expected me to clamber into her office dressed in mud-soaked wellies with straw in my hair, brandishing a pitchfork and looking exactly like Felicity Kendal from The Good Life. And while ordinarily that mightn’t be too far off the truth (The Sticks isn’t exactly Paris during fashion week), at least, thank God, today I’m out of my normal jeans and woolly jumper and am in my best shop assistant gear: a warm woolly coat, a wraparound dress and a half-decent, non-mud-stained pair of boots.

‘No,’ she growls, still scrutinising me. ‘You still look like the same old Annie Cole. Which is good news. Which is exactly what we want.’

She’s got black and white pictures of all her clients dotted round the office walls and through the haze of smoke I manage to make my own photo out. Taken over four years ago, but apart from a few more wrinkles and a few extra pounds…no, I’m not really all that much different. Same dark skin, same long, dark, centre-parted, wiry hair that needs enough hairspray to put a dent in the ozone layer just to get it to lie down flat…same everything.

Funny, but looking at my own photo always reminds me of how alike Dan and I are, even the way we look. We both have the identical eye colour: deep brown, which turns straight to coal black when either of us are worn out or exhausted. We could almost pass for brother and sister. Or as Jules puts it a bit more cruelly, I look like him dressed in drag.

Ouch.

‘OK, down to business,’ says Hilary, sitting forward and balancing her fag on the edge of an ashtray. ‘You’re familiar with Jack Gordon’s work, no doubt?’

‘THE Jack Gordon? Are you kidding me? Yes, yeah, of course I am, he’s completely amazing,’ I blurt out, wondering where this could possibly be headed.

Jack Gordon, by the way, would be one of the youngest and hottest theatre directors in town; so unbelievably successful that you’d almost think the legal firm of Beelzebub and Faustus had a contract on file with his name scrawled on it in suspicious looking red ink. I’m not joking, actors nearly impale themselves just to get a chance to audition for him, never mind work for him. But then Jack’s reputation goes before him and boy, does he have the Olivier awards hanging out of him to prove it. His productions are always cutting edge, razor sharp and invariably the talk of the chattering classes. In fact, probably the only thing that’s slowed down the guy’s progress over the years is the deep drift of bouquets and laurels that he’s had to wade through.

The theatre world’s Alexander McQueen, in short.

‘Then have a read of this,’ says Hilary, tossing a bound script over to me.

I look at the title of the play, Wedding Belles. By a new playwright whose name I’m not familiar with.

‘It’s a comedy-drama and a smash hit to boot,’ Hilary goes on. ‘Set in a health spa where a group of women of different ages and all from the same family go for a hen weekend, because the protagonist is getting married. It opened at the National back in October, during the theatre festival and is still packing them in.’

Now a distant bell begins to ring.

‘Yeah, that’s right…I remember reading some of the reviews when it first opened,’ I tell her, excitedly grabbing hold of the script and flicking through it.

Fag Ash Hil just raises a Vulcan eyebrow at me, like she’s shocked that we actually do get paper deliveries down in The Sticks and don’t just communicate with the outside world via carrier pigeon. But I don’t care, because by now I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation, wondering what all of this can possibly have to do with me and with my little life. The show is already up and running so it’s not like I can go and audition for it, now is it? Aren’t I already a few months too late for that?

‘The curtain goes up at seven-thirty sharp tonight. I’ve already managed to wangle a house seat for you, and I need you there,’ says Hilary, pulling so deeply on her fag that it’s like the breath comes from her toes. ‘Then you’ll go back to bog-trotter land…’

For the sake of diplomacy, I let that one pass. Mainly because I know only too well that as far as Hilary is concerned, if you’re based anywhere further than a thirty-mile radius from Harvey Nichols, chances are you live in a mud hut and spend your spare time either milking cattle or else throwing stones at the neighbours. When you’re not worrying about the new taxes on cider, that is.

On she goes: ‘…where you’ll spend the rest of the night studying that script like your life depended on it. Then tomorrow afternoon…’

‘But, Hilary, I don’t understand…none of this makes any sense…I mean, the show is already cast and in production…’

‘If you’d let me finish, I was about to explain that the leading actress has literally just given notice to the producers that she’s pregnant and will have to drop out of the show very soon. In a matter of weeks, as it happens. It seems that she’s almost four months gone and unfortunately for her, the pregnancy can’t be disguised any more. Plus, as you’ll see when you read the script, her role is quite a physical one, so she’s been advised by her doctors to drop out of the show as soon as possible. For the health and safety of the child, naturally.’

‘Pregnant?’ I repeat stupidly.

‘Which is where you come in. Jack Gordon remembered seeing you in a production of Twelfth Night years ago. Of course that would have been before you decided to take early retirement and disappear off into the professional wilderness…’

Again, I bite my tongue and let that pass; I’m waaaaay too keyed up right now to bother defending my life.

‘…And he thinks that you might possibly be right to take over the role…’

‘He WHAT? He actually said that?’ I almost yell, stunned that the mighty Jack Gordon even remembered me in the first place.

‘So maybe if you’d shut up for two seconds together, I could get to tell you the really good news. Jack is only seeing three actresses this week to audition them for the part. And you, my dear, are one of the lucky three.’

For the first time since I arrived here, I’m completely shell-shocked into silence.

After I leave Hilary’s office, I somehow stagger to a Starbucks, find a quiet corner and desperately try to calm down, even though my heart’s palpitating so fast, I almost feel like I should be breathing into a paper bag. I grab a mug of coffee and start reading through the script, with trembling hands and eyes that won’t even focus properly; I’m that all over the place.

The play, by the way, isn’t just amazing, it’s an absolute cracker. A wow. It’s rare enough that you find half-decent parts written for women these days, but this one really is like the gold standard. It’s an all-female cast, five women in total, ranging in age from a teenager right up to a woman in her mid-fifties. And the part I’m up for, fingers, toes and eyeballs crossed, is the bride-to-be, aged twenty four, the exact same ludicrously young age I was myself when I got married.

I’m not just saying it, but it really would be a dream role, it’s got everything. Highs, lows, thrills, spills and a twist that never in a sugar rush could you possibly see coming. A show that lulls you into a false sense of security…then gives you a swift, sharp punch right to the solar plexus. Starts out as pure farce and ends in tragedy.

So not all that different to my own marriage, when you come to think about it.

In fact, I’m so utterly engrossed in reading it that before I know where I am, it’s already past seven pm. So I race for the National theatre, which is right in the dead centre of town and thankfully only a short sprint away. I call Dan on the way, of course, knowing full well that I’ll only get his voicemail. At this time, he’ll still be out doing farm calls, so I leave a hysterical message explaining what’s happened and faithfully promise to be home right after the show. The full story, I figure, can wait till we’re talking properly. Face to face. So he can’t get away from me, or tune me out, or else start talking about bovine diarrhoea.

Course by now there’s about four missed calls from Audrey wondering what could possibly have happened to me/where am I/do I realise this is her pension day and that she needs to be driven to and from the post office? But I don’t get back to her, deciding instead to postpone the guilt trip till tomorrow. This is one fire I’ll just have to pee on later.

I swear to God though, even just being back inside the theatre does my heart the world of good. Like the little actress that’s been dying inside me for years suddenly gets an adrenaline shot right to the bone marrow. I’ve worked at the National many times before and it feels beyond exhilarating to be back and to see everyone again.

Tom, the gorgeous front of house manager is straight over to me, giving me a big bear hug and welcoming me back so warmly that I almost get a bit teary. Then the box office girls all squeal when I stick my head in to say hi and tell me it’s like old times seeing me back. Like this is the set of Hello Dolly and somehow I’ve morphed into Barbra Streisand for the night.

And the play is only mesmerising. Hilariously funny, but in the blackest way you could imagine, yet packing such a mighty powerful punch that judging from the look of the audience around me, leaves people reeling by the final curtain. The cast takes an astonishing three standing ovations and I’m pretty sure I’m the last person to leave the auditorium; I just want to stay here, soak up the atmosphere and not break the magical spell that’s been woven round us all.

Even better, a very old pal of mine going back years, an actress called Liz Shields is in the cast too, so I text her to tell her I’m here and waiting in the bar to say hi to her. Ten minutes later, she bounces out from her dressing room, still in all her war-paint, with her swishy blonde hair extensions and wearing her usual ‘rock chick’ gear of leather and denim. Looking like a young Madonna and Christina Aguilera if they were to step out of the matter transporter in The Fly, if you get me.

I’m not joking you; Liz yells out my name so loudly that half the bar turns round to take in the sideshow.

‘Holy Jaysus, Annie bloody Cole!! Come here and givvus a hug! Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you?!’ So we hug and squeal and kiss and I can’t tell you how beyond fab it is to see her again.

Liz and I trained in drama school here in Dublin together, ooh, way back in Old God’s time, and from the day we met, we just clicked. She’s completely wild and mad and fun – one of those people that you could start off having a normal night out with, like say, grabbing a few drinks in town…then you wake up the following morning in Holyhead. And by the way, that Holyhead story is no exaggeration and I should know; it happened on my hen night.

Anyway, we grab a table, order a vodka for Liz, a Coke for me and settle down into a big catch-up chat, yakking over each other just like we always used to. Juggling about five different conversations up in the air simultaneously.

‘So what did you think of the show?’ she asks excitedly, ‘and by that of course I mean, what did you think of me? Go on, rate me. And none of your plamassing either; be inhuman. Be vicious.’

‘Easy, eleven out of ten,’ I giggle back at her, loving the banter and not realising just how much I’ve missed it. For a split second not even being able to remember the last time I actually laughed.

‘Feck off, eleven out of ten sounds insincere.’

‘Right then, nine point nine if it’ll make you believe me! Seriously, Liz, do you even know how amazing you were out there tonight? Honest to God, girl, you’d be magnetic if you stood on the stage reading out instructions to an IKEA flat pack sofa…but in a show as good as this? You were bloody mesmerising! Only the truth, babe.’

She playfully punches me, then yells over to the barman: ‘What’s keeping our drinks, Ice Age?’

Pure, vintage Liz. I give her a completely spontaneous hug and then tell her the real reason why I came to the show all by myself tonight. Well, they must hear her shrieks all the way back in The Sticks. I honestly think that she’s more excited about my audition than even I am, if that were possible. Bless her, she even offers to ring up another one of the cast to get her to say her magic, foolproof novena to Saint Jude, to guarantee I land the part.

‘So tell me then,’ I ask, fishing for the one scrap of information I’m burning to find out. ‘What’s he like to work with? The mighty Jack Gordon.’

Liz sucks in her cheeks and thinks before answering.

‘Jack is…it’s hard to say…I don’t really know him, even though I’ve known him for years. He’s like nine parts genius to one part knob, if that makes sense. Hard to please. Never happy with the show, even on nights when we take three standing ovations, one after the other. Never happy with anything. Apparently the National are putting him up in some five star hotel in town and he walked straight into it and said, ‘what a dump.’

My heart shrivels at this, suddenly nauseous at the thought that I have to audition for him tomorrow.

‘Oh and he’s having a fling with one of the box office girls here in the theatre,’ Liz continues. ‘A young one barely old enough to have seen all the episodes of Friends. And he treats her like complete shite, if you ask me. Always saying he’ll call her and then not. Inviting her to dinner after the show then not turning up and leaving the poor kid standing here on her own, with the rest of us all looking at her mortified. And afraid to bitch about him to her in case it all gets back. So in short: beware. Jack’s a guy who’s very good at saying things that he doesn’t mean to people, then trampling on them to get what he wants. And because he’s lauded as the wunderkind of the theatre world, he gets away with it.’

Just then, the drinks arrive and the two of us automatically get into an ‘I’m getting this/no, feck off, I am’ tussle over who pays. ‘Anyway, do you realise,’ Liz says, mercifully changing the subject, ‘that if you do land the gig, we’d end up playing best friends? I mean, come on, Annie, how incredible would that be?’

I glow a bit, for a split second, allowing myself to believe that the fantasy might really come true. And then I remember the full details of the job, spelled out carefully to me by Fag Ash Hil in her office earlier. The massive, full extent of the commitment involved, in the unlikely event of things going my way. In other words that, no matter how overwhelmingly thrilling the thoughts of doing the gig might be, fact is, it still comes with the most massive price tag attached.

Anyway, there’s no time to dwell on that because meanwhile Liz has already buzzed onto another major catch-up topic, as she brings me up to speed on her love life.

‘So in unrelated news,’ she says, laying into the vodka, ‘I’m still single. In fact, since I last saw you, I’ve had a total of about thirteen flings, roughly about the same number of shags and only one actual bona fide boyfriend. Crap, isn’t it? Oh and by “boyfriend”, just so you’re clear, I actually mean, “guy who I saw for longer than a single weekend”. Although, to be honest, he was one of those blokes who basically would have gone home with a gardening tool. And by now I’ve gone on so many blind dates, they should consider giving me a free guide dog. In other words, Annie, I still have a massive radar for emotionally unavailable guys with low self-esteem. Commit-twits. Half the time they don’t even have jobs either. So there you go. But, in a way, isn’t it reassuring to know that some things don’t change? You got lucky and meanwhile, I’m still out there chasing after nut-jobs.