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.
‘Anyway,’ she breaks off, waving to the barman to send over another vodka, ‘like I always say, if Matt Damon was single and if he wasn’t famous and if he lived and worked in Dublin and if he knew me…I’m highly confident that we’d be dating, you know.’
‘That’s an awful lot of ifs, babe,’ I giggle.
‘Easy for you to say. Cos let’s face it, you married the only decent guy left in the entire northern hemisphere.’
I say nothing, just shake my head and smile quietly to myself, remembering fondly back to all the long, long nights we’d spend dissecting every aspect of Liz’s dating history, then putting it all back together again.
‘But if pressed on the subject by well-meaning but irritating relations, here’s what I always say,’ she laughs, knocking back the last dregs of her vodka and suddenly putting on a posh, cut-crystal English accent, ‘“One of the reasons I’ve never married, in spite of quite a bewildering array of offers, is a determination to never be ordered around.” Go on, Annie, I challenge you to name that one.’
This, by the way, is a game we’ve been playing ever since drama school – the Quotation Game. One of us throws out a line from a well-known play or movie, and the other has to guess where it’s from. And inevitably, with her sharp brain and her great memory for trivia, Liz wins.
‘Ehh…Glenn Close as the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons?’ I ask, gingerly.
‘Ten out of ten! You never lost your touch, babe. Anyway, enough about me. Tell me some of your news.’
‘News? From Stickens? Are you kidding me? I wish.’
‘Oh come on, hon, how’s that gorgeous big ride of a husband of yours? How’s your perfect married life in rural bliss?’
This is my cue to lie of course, not let the side down, smile brightly and say that everything is wonderful, lovely and perfect. All the while thinking to myself that seeing as how I’m in Dublin anyway, I might as well scatter the ashes of any sex life we once might have had into the River Liffey.
‘…which neatly leads me onto my next question,’ Liz says, munching on an ice cube from her empty vodka glass, just like she always used to. ‘If all goes well at your audition tomorrow and if you land the part, do you think Dan will be OK with…well,…you know. With everything. With the whole package, I mean. It’s one hell of a commitment. I mean, when you think about it, it’s something that could rock far less stable marriages then yours, hon.’
I look sheepishly across the table at her and take a sip of my drink.
‘The thing is, you see, Liz…he doesn’t know.’
It’s ridiculously late, almost two thirty in the morning before I’m finally pulling into The Moorings’ massive gravelled driveway, then tip-toeing up the main staircase to our bedroom. I almost have a mental map in my head now of the floorboards that creak versus the ones that don’t, so I creep in a ziz-zag pattern all the way upstairs, so as not to wake Dan. Honest to God, if you saw me, you’d swear I was off-my-head drunk, even though I was on nothing stronger than Diet Coke for the whole night.
It’s nearly pitch dark when I skulk into our bedroom, but I can still make out Dan’s huge, muscular silhouette, faintly red in the alarm clock light. He’s got the duvet covers flung off him, his thick dark bed-head is all skew-ways, and he’s wearing only a T-shirt; as ever, his hulking, six-foot-two frame taking over about ninety per cent of all available bed space. Plus he’s sleeping like he always does, in the shape of someone who’s just been washed up on a beach. Totally out for the count and utterly oblivious to the sword of Damocles that’s potentially hovering over both our heads.
Half of me is bursting to wake him up and tell him all, but the cautious half wins out; I just can’t. He’s worn out and exhausted and it would be mean. It’ll have to wait till the morning, simple as that.
Weird thing; it’s as though I’m looking at him and really seeing him clearly for the first time in ages. Noticing things I’d either blanked out about him or else completely taken for granted. His broad-shouldered, toned, fit body for one; trim and in fantastic shape from all the sheer physical exertion his job involves. The gentle sounds he makes whenever he’s in a really deep, exhausted sleep. His musky smell and the heat from his body, the sheer, pulsating warmth of him. All the joshing and messing we used to have way back in earlier, happier days, about how permanently freezing I am and about how he’s like a big, giant, human comforter, perfect for snuggling up to at night. Like I’m the air-conditioner in the summer and he’s the electric blanket in winter.
I get undressed as quietly as I can, trying my best to ignore the anxiety-knot that’s solidifying into what feels like a tight ball of cement right in the pit of my stomach. God, even just thinking about The Major Chat he and I are going to have to have at some point tomorrow is enough to get my heart palpitating all over again. What Dan might