A wonderful collection of short stories from Sheila O'Flanagan, Sunday Times bestselling author of THE MISSING WIFE and THE HIDEAWAY. The Moment We Meet was previously published as Destinations.
Featuring an exclusive Q&A with Sheila O'Flanagan...
Perfect for readers of Catherine Alliott and Marian Keyes.
A young PR girl has the night of her life at a glitzy work event and finds more than just her face splashed across the newspapers the next day.
Two women listen in on each other's phone calls and learn more about themselves than they ever expected.
And a wife faces up to the truth that her husband isn't a man she feels safe with.
Everyone aboard this train is on a journey - and they all have a story to tell...
Praise for Sheila O'Flanagan's bestselling novels:
He sold the car because it was an unnecessary expense. He’d thought about getting rid of it before but knew it wouldn’t look good. People in his position always had cars no matter how ridiculous the traffic was or how much longer it took them to get to work. But getting to work wasn’t a problem now that he was living in a basement flat which was only a ten-minute walk away. There was, he thought, a lot to be said for the concept of living within walking distance of the office instead of having to endure the early-morning commute through south Dublin traffic, guiltily listening to 98FM when he felt he should really be listening to the business news on Radio 4.
The only difficulty in being without the car was days like today. He was hoping that there wouldn’t be too many days like today, that things could get sorted out and that eventually everything would be back to normal, but right now it was all a bit of a strain. He walked along the carriage to the doors so that he would be ready to get off the Dart as soon as it pulled into Killiney station. Until a few months ago he’d only known that the station existed; he’d never even dreamed of getting the Dart anywhere. Now he was getting used to it although the variety of people who got on it never ceased to amaze him. Previously he would have considered them losers. He’d have thought of them as people lower down the pecking order than him: office dogsbodies, temps, PAs, people who had to get the train because they didn’t have decent cars. He hadn’t realised that Dublin had changed so that more and more men like himself – men dressed in tailored suits, wearing shirts with cufflinks and carrying briefcases – actually used the train. Maybe they were more like him than he thought. He smiled wryly at the idea. They weren’t on the train today, of course, since it was Saturday. Presumably they were at home in their five-bedroomed houses with family rooms, big kitchens and conservatories. Five-bedroomed houses like his.
The house was exactly a mile away from the station. He didn’t mind the walk, not on a day like today, with the sun shining from a clear blue sky and the gentle southwesterly breeze that rustled through the trees and sent the occasional early-autumn leaves skidding along the pavement.
They’d chosen their home with care. It was a modern house in a prosperous suburb; a small development off the main road so that it was safe for children. Located close to the school and not too far from a small row of shops – although, as he often said to Helena afterwards, what difference did being near the local shops make when she bought everything in an incredibly expensive Friday afternoon foray into the supermarket? Handy for essentials, she’d replied. Milk or the papers or anything like that. But as far as he knew she never went to the local shops, instead she drove to Dún Laoghaire or Blackrock and loaded up her 4×4 with enough groceries to keep them going for months. She did this every week. On the same trip she usually got her hair done – sometimes just washed and blow-dried, other days trimmed and, once a month, highlighted, refreshing the golden glints that softened her natural fairness and added life to her shoulder-length locks.
He was always turned on after her visits to the hairdresser. He didn’t know why. There were lots of other things about her that turned him on – her lithe figure which she kept in shape by a rigorous diet and three-times-a-week visits to the gym; her pouting lips which always made him want to kiss them; her habit of rubbing the base of her throat when she was worried – whenever she did this he would put his arms around her and rub her throat himself, his fingers then sliding very gently downwards to the swell of her breasts.
Even thinking about it turned him on. He stopped thinking about it and crossed the road.
The maroon and silver 4×4 was parked in the neatly cobbled driveway. The midday sun reflected brightly off its freshly polished surface. She always kept it looking as though she’d just driven it from the showrooms. She was unlike many women, he realised, in not turning the interior of her vehicle into an extension of the house, filled with toys and tissues and discarded sweet wrappings. As far as Helena was concerned, the car was for getting around in. Not for bringing everything with them.
He rang the doorbell, heard the chime echo through the house and the sound of Helena’s high heels tapping on the solid oak floor, which they’d had put down when they moved in.
She opened the door. ‘You’re early.’
‘Nice to see you too,’ he said. ‘I’m five minutes early.’
‘She’s out the back.’
Helena’s eyes were flint grey. There was no warmth in them, there hadn’t been any warmth in them for the past four months. It bugged the hell out of him. She’d had a right to be angry but she didn’t have any right to keep on being angry, to keep on punishing him for something that had been nothing more than a mistake. Everyone made mistakes. He was sure she’d made her fair share of them, except, of course, nobody knew about them. She kept hers quiet. It had been different with him.
‘Daddy!’ A small blonde whirlwind burst into the room and dived into his arms. He picked up the little girl and held her close to him, taking in her powdery scent, the freshness of her newly washed hair, the plumpness of her skin.
‘How’s my favourite girl?’ he asked.
‘Starving,’ she told him seriously. ‘Mum wouldn’t allow me to have anything to eat. She said you were taking me to lunch.’
‘I guess she was right,’ he told her.
‘There’s a new burger place opened at the top of the main road,’ Helena told him. ‘I booked it for you because it’s crazy on Saturdays. They have colouring sheets for the kids and that sort of thing. She’s been begging me to go again since I took her there last month. I thought it would be convenient for you.’
He clenched his teeth and then smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’
‘Get your coat, Dana,’ she told the little girl.
‘I don’t need a coat.’
‘You do,’ said Helena. ‘It’s cold outside. Tell her, Greg.’
He looked at both of them. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.
‘Oh, OK.’ Dana clambered down from his arms and went to get her coat.
His eyes flickered around the kitchen. ‘New TV?’
‘The other one blew up.’
Helena began to fold clothes from the big laundry basket in the corner of the room.
‘It was a mistake,’ he said into her silence. ‘I told you it was a mistake.’
She continued to fold the clothes.
‘For God’s sake, Helena, can’t you just accept that? For the sake of Dana?’
She turned to look at him, a bright pink T-shirt in her hands. ‘Don’t ever say that again,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t try and make me feel bad about you because of our daughter. Just don’t.’
‘But—’
‘We’ve been through it all, Greg. I don’t want to go through it all again. And if you continue to harass me every time you call by then I’m going to ask them to stop you coming at all.’
‘You are such a bitch.’ His voice was low.
‘I’m not,’ she told him. ‘I wasn’t the one to fuck up our marriage.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ he said. ‘We can make it right again.’
‘I never made it wrong,’ she said fiercely. ‘So it’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘I miss you,’ he said. ‘I really do.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Helena.
Dana rushed back into the kitchen, the buttons on her coat done up the wrong way. Helena leaned down and re-buttoned it for her, then ruffled her hair and told her to be good.
‘What’s the place called?’ asked Greg.
‘Heavenly Hams.’ Helena shrugged. ‘Sounds awful, I know. But she’ll love it.’
He walked hand-in-hand with his daughter who kept up a flow of chatter about the things that she’d done during the week: the friends that she’d made, the friends that weren’t friends any more, the unfairness of her teacher for giving them ten new spellings to learn over the weekend. Hard spellings, Dana told him. Big words.
‘What words?’ he asked, and his heart contracted as she wrinkled up her nose in an exact replica of Helena when she was concentrating.
‘Bump,’ she told him. ‘Frost. Head. Pant. Kitten. Sniff. Wizard.’
‘Do you want to do them for me?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know them all yet. Except Wizard.’
He frowned. ‘Isn’t that a hard one?’
She grinned. ‘I know it from Harry Potter, Daddy.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Good old Harry Potter.’
He remembered reading it to her, a chapter every night before bedtime. He’d thought it would frighten her and sometimes she pulled the sheet up over her nose as she squirmed uneasily beneath the covers, but she always made him go on and she never minded going to sleep afterwards.
‘Bad magic can’t happen here,’ she told him confidently. ‘It’s only in other places.’
They reached the restaurant – it was already crowded with children and tense-looking parents, a babel of noise and music and activity. He could feel a headache begin to take hold.
A waitress, dressed in bright-red shorts and a yellow T-shirt and wearing roller skates, led them to their table. She gave Dana a sheet of colouring paper and a bowl full of crayons.
‘What would you like to drink?’ she asked.
‘Do you serve beer?’ asked Greg.
The waitress nodded.
‘Beer for me,’ he told her. ‘What about you, Dana?’
‘Coke,’ said his daughter absently as she selected a blue crayon and began colouring.
‘I’ll be back for your food order.’ The waitress skated in the direction of the kitchen.
‘What do you want to eat?’ he asked.
‘I want the burger with the cheesy sauce and the spicy chips,’ said Dana. ‘I don’t want any onion because I don’t like it. And I want the burger well done.’
He was glad that she knew what she wanted, astonished at her confidence. He was sure that as a child brought into any restaurant he would have been in agonies of indecision, wondering whether he was allowed to have what he really wanted, concerned that perhaps he was asking for the wrong thing.
He gave the order to the permanently smiling waitress, choosing a plain burger for himself. He looked around him again. Mostly families. Trying to keep their kids under some control but with varying degrees of success. Some mothers on their own dealing with small armies of children. He saw two other lone fathers. Their children were sitting at the table, like Dana, colouring furiously.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. This wasn’t how things were meant to turn out. She blamed him for it all and he supposed that he had to take it but it wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t. Surely there was room for forgiveness somewhere? He watched the other father talk to his son and wondered if it was the same with him. If he’d had to leave the family home too? If he was spending most of his money on damn solicitors, knowing that he was still going to end up the wrong side of it? He wondered had the other father been as stupid as him. He wanted to ask but he knew that he wouldn’t.
Their food arrived and Dana ate her way through the burger and chips. She was a slow, deliberate eater. He’d finished his long before her but even though her chips were now cold she continued to eat them, dipping each one into the bright-red tomato sauce before popping it into her mouth.
A few months ago he would have been on the golf course every Saturday. That was how he spent his Saturday mornings before the split. Himself, Jim Pallister, Noel O’Gorman and Mick Hogan had been an established fourball, teeing off at eight-thirty, getting back to the clubhouse in time for a steak sandwich and the start of the football. He’d get home mid-afternoon and beg Dana not to jump on him, that he was tired, and Helena would lift the little girl off his shoulders where she’d wrapped herself and tell her that Daddy would play with her later.
He was the one who’d fucked it all up. Helena was right about that. Only he hadn’t meant to. It wasn’t as though he’d intended to do what he’d done. It had been a mistake. He told her over and over again how sorry he was.
It was at the office Christmas party, of course. There was a free bar and everyone taking full advantage of it. In-house catering, good food, though more people were interested in the drink. He’d drunk far too much himself. He always did at the office Christmas parties. It was how he’d met Helena in the first place.
But at this party, eight years after he’d kissed Helena in the lift on the way to the ground floor, it was Kimberley he met. Kimberley from Accounts, twenty-two years old, raven-haired, blue-eyed – the hottest property in the company. He’d been flattered that she’d danced with him to the totally terrible playlist of DJ Ricky Rollinson (also from Accounts and usually known as Richard). He’d been stunned when she was the one to kiss him, a promising, probing kiss that had fired through him, making him pull her towards him, his hands sliding down her back. And she’d giggled then and said ‘not here’ and the next thing he knew they were in his office and he was having sex with her even though he’d never looked at another woman (well, looked, but that was all) since he’d married Helena.
It had been fast and frantic and absolutely fantastic.
Afterwards he’d felt guilty and he’d worried that Kimberley might have thought there was more to it, that he cared about her. And then he panicked a little bit because he wondered what would happen if she got pregnant.
He needn’t have worried about any of those things. Kimberley wasn’t interested in him and Kimberley couldn’t be pregnant. What he should have worried about he hadn’t known about – Liam O’Reilly and his mobile phone. Greg and Kimberley had been putting on a show for half the office because they hadn’t realised that the blinds on one of the glass walls had been open. Liam had spotted that and had taken their photo.
It wasn’t the most compromising photo Liam could have taken. But it was bad enough. Liam had shared it with a few of the blokes in the office, who hadn’t wasted any time letting Greg know. The lads had had a good giggle and, after a few weeks, Greg had pushed it to the back of his mind, hoping that it was yesterday’s joke.
Only someone (he didn’t know who and not knowing was killing him) forwarded it to Helena. Who, understandably, had gone ballistic. Who hadn’t accepted his ‘I was drunk and it didn’t mean anything’ excuse. Who didn’t want to believe him when he told her that it would never happen again. Who didn’t understand that just because he’d had sex with a girl from the office at the Christmas party, it didn’t mean that his marriage wasn’t the most important thing in the world to him. Helena had told him to leave, he’d refused, there’d been under-their-breath screaming matches held when Dana was in bed asleep in which Helena had called him a traitorous, unfaithful bastard and where he’d pleaded with her to realise that the Kimberley thing was meaningless, nothing, and that she had, in fact, left the company a few weeks earlier.
Helena ranted that he didn’t understand, that he couldn’t go around having casual sex with women and expect her to put up with it. And he’d tried to explain that it was a one-off and that it had happened because of circumstances and it would never ever happen again.
She’d asked whether or not those circumstances could happen again – whether or not he could get drunk at a party and if so whether or not he’d regard any woman as fair game – and he’d begged her to believe that he wouldn’t. And then she’d said that she didn’t trust him any more and she wanted him to leave.
He’d left, eventually, because he couldn’t take it any more. Next thing he knew there were maintenance orders being slapped on him and vicious letters from her solicitor. He couldn’t quite believe the fact that she wasn’t going to forgive him, that she wanted to set out a schedule for him to visit Dana, and that suddenly he was a stranger in his own home. He was the one paying the mortgage, he was the one providing for them, but he was the one living in the basement flat ten minutes away from the office and he was the one without the car because he needed the money for his own legal expenses.
Everyone was on Helena’s side. He was the bastard. He’d made the fatal mistake.
‘I want to go now, Daddy.’ Dana’s words brought him out of his troubled thoughts.
‘Sure.’ He paid the bill and they left the restaurant, her hand tucked into his again.
‘Mum says you’re not coming home,’ Dana told him as they walked down the road again.
‘It’s difficult,’ he said.
‘I said I wanted you to come home.’
‘I’d like to be there,’ said Greg. ‘But I can’t at the moment.’
‘I don’t like it that you’re not.’
He wanted to cry when she said that. Helena didn’t know how bad he felt. She was wallowing in her self-righteous indignation and her own hurt and he knew she’d a right to feel like that but, goddamn it, he was sorry, wasn’t he? He knew it had been wrong. If he could change things he would. He hadn’t wanted it to turn out like this.
Back at the house, Dana wrapped her arms around him and asked him not to go. He looked over her head at Helena’s expressionless face.
‘For her sake?’ he mouthed. ‘I love you.’
‘Daddy’s got to go now,’ said Helena shortly as she prised Dana’s fingers loose. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
‘I want him to stay,’ she wailed.
‘Another time,’ said Greg.
Helena shook her head.
‘Can’t you just ...’ he looked at her pleadingly as Dana ran upstairs.
‘I know it’s different for men,’ said Helena. ‘I know you don’t think that it was such an awful thing. But to me it was. And I can’t live with you any more.’
‘But you can take my money,’ he said harshly. ‘You can stay in this house and you can have all the things that I work for.’
‘You should’ve thought of that before you shagged the bitch,’ hissed Helena.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I always have and I always will.’
‘But I don’t love you,’ said Helena simply. ‘Not any more.’
He walked back to the Dart station and waited on the platform. The breeze was stronger now, skimming papers along the tracks. This wasn’t how it should turn out, he thought despairingly as he watched the train approach.
This wasn’t the life he thought he was going to lead. But somehow it had all gone wrong and now he was getting the train again, going home to somewhere that would never be home and leaving the things he cared about behind. Until next Saturday. At twelve.
I’m not a fashion victim. I’m not even a fashion bystander. I can’t tell my Dolce & Gabbana from my Prada or my Ralph Lauren from my Donna Karan. I don’t know what their little designer signature touches are because I buy most of my clothes from high-street stores and once they look good I’m happy. I do have a vague notion of Versace, mind you, because of Liz Hurley and the safety pin dress. I remember seeing the pictures splashed all over the newspapers and I looked at Charlie and asked her what on earth all the fuss was about, the bloody dress was awful.
‘It’s a fashion statement,’ said Charlie, who knows as much about fashion statements as Liz. She’s been making them herself ever since the day she hitched her St Gabriel’s navy-blue skirt up high on her waist and showed more thigh than the nuns ever intended them to show. Unlike me, Charlie knows her labels. She knows her make-up. She’s good at that kind of thing.
I’ve known her ever since we met in our first year at St Gabriel’s and, despite a lot of things, we hit it off. Don’t panic. This is not a story about a gorgeous-looking girl who hangs around with an ugly girl and tries to rob her kind, caring boyfriend. Unfortunately, I don’t have a kind, caring boyfriend. But even if I had, Charlie wouldn’t try to rob him. She is, and always will be, gorgeous. She’s tall and slender and she has a certain style about her which I’ll never have. But she’s never tried to rob any of my boyfriends. Anyway, I’m not ugly! I’m OK, nothing spectacular – although when I’m bothered to slap on the foundation I can look quite good. But most of the time I don’t worry about make-up, I’m just not into all that sort of stuff.
The reason Charlie and I have been friends for so long is that we both share similar tastes – books, music and creating things. With Charlie, naturally, it’s clothes. With me it’s ad campaigns. I regret to say that I work in that whole advertising, media, PR world. Everyone thinks it’s nothing but parties and drinks and glamorous nights out and, of course, it can be. But I try not to bother because, in truth, I hate that part of it. I like coming up with the ideas and the slogans and I like making the pitch. But I don’t like the palaver that goes on afterwards where everyone pops bottles of champagne and congratulates themselves on another breakthrough ad for cornflakes. I prefer nights in with a glass of wine and a book because – well, meeting people is so damn difficult, isn’t it? And I meet them when they’re at their worst – usually having had a few drinks, always trying to impress and cracking very unfunny jokes. And that’s just the women. I’ve never, ever met an interesting guy at one of these parties. Not the sort of guy I’d want to go out with at any rate.
Charlie has lots of boyfriends because she can’t help but attract men and sometimes we double date, which is a bit of a laugh. But she hasn’t found anyone serious yet and she’s not rushing. The drawback to working in fashion, of course, is that she meets lots and lots of absolutely wonderful men, all of whom are gay. I thought it was a cliché to think that ga. . .
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