A Hundred Ways to Break Up (Let's Make This Thing Happen 2) (10 page)

§

She called Ray in the evening. She’d needed to give herself time to gather her thoughts and calm down a little. Needed to work out what to tell him: how would he react if she told him Thom had tried to attack her?

“He did
what?
Are you okay, Emily? Where are you? Where’s
he?
”

“It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m staying at Marcia’s place. I don’t know where Thom is. I don’t care. I’m fine, Ray. He couldn’t even hit me properly. I’ve left him now. I’m not going back. That’s all over.”

“What can I do? Just name it.”

“Dinner?” It was a spur of the moment suggestion: she was in no state to go out right now. Curled up in Marcia’s living room in a borrowed tracksuit a couple of sizes too tight, her make-up smudged with tears and a massive balloon-glass of Cabernet Sauvignon cradled in her lap.

“I... It’s a bit of a trek...”

“Hnh? Where are you, Ray? What do you mean?”

“I’m at the chateau, babe. Didn’t I say? I flew out here this morning.”

His place in the Loire. The modest little chateau he’d suggested as a hideaway. Had he said he was going there anyway? She didn’t think so, but everything was a blur right now. It felt wrong, as if he was hiding – not only from the press, but from her, too.

“You still there?”

“I am. Just drinking wine with Marcia and plotting out what to do next.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find a solicitor, see what the legal position is. Get my stuff. Find somewhere to stay until this is all sorted out.”

“Makes sense.”

He wasn’t leaping in to help. Wasn’t offering her somewhere to stay, or a top legal team. Maybe he was just being sensitive, letting her find her own way. Maybe he didn’t want to be seen to be interfering. Maybe it was one of those and not simply that he was suddenly aware that this changed everything – couple her changed circumstances with the sudden pressure from the press and maybe he was starting to have second thoughts.

“So why the chateau?”

“I’m doing what you said, babe.” There was a change in his tone now, a relaxation. “When we spoke about it all yesterday. When you kept pressing me to find out why I’m really doing this thing all over again. You were right: I’m not doing it for them. I’m not doing it for the men in suits and their pension plans. I’m doing it for
me
. And I’m doing it for
us
. Remember that song I wrote at the Roxette, the one that came to me when I saw you in the crowd?”

How could she not remember that?

“I have a studio here and I recorded that song this afternoon. Rake’s here, too. He played bass on it, and he’s mixing it right now. It’s cut-down, minimalist: just guitar, bass and some strings. We’re going to release it next week, then it’ll be the final track on the album.

“We’re stripping everything back, the whole album. I spent far too long fine-tuning it. It should be stripped down,
raw
, but it ended up safe and over-produced. You made me see this. It should be like the gig at the Roxette: something from the heart. You made me understand that I was compromising everything, but this should be
my
sound, not something designed to please a record company executive. It’s a sea-change, Emily: all of a sudden I remember why I’m doing this!”

Maybe he was stepping back or being sensitive or something, but perhaps it was simpler than that: perhaps he was just distracted. He was like a big kid playing with a new toy, or rediscovering an old, favorite one. He was in his element, and when he was like this he clearly left the rest of the world somewhere far behind.

She was crying again. Heavy tears pooling and then spilling down her cheeks.

She didn’t know why. There was all the heartache and mess of her life, of course, but there was a joy tucked away in that complex of emotions, too. The joy of witnessing something like this – a man getting swept up in his art – but also that she was part of it, that he said he was doing it for them.
Us
. The joy, too, that she had inspired it: that moment at the Roxette, and then yesterday, pressing and pressing him until he worked out what was wrong and what he wanted to do.

“You still there, babe?”

She’d said nothing for some time now, just listened to him, enjoying his voice and his enthusiasm.

“I am.”

“Good. So am I. For you. Always.”

The story broke on Monday.

Emily didn’t know what she’d expected. It was hardly front-page, banner headline material, after all. One of the tabloids had a paragraph in their gossip section.

Former Angry Cans heartthrob Ray Sandler is back in the studio – and on the prowl! Everyone wants to know the identity of Ray's latest curvy fancy, and we can exclusively reveal that she is... nobody you'll ever have heard of. Brunette beauty Emily Rivers was working as a city business consultant (yaaawn) when she caught Ray's eye and started advising him on his spreadsheets. Let's hope she gave him some good advice – like "Watch out for my jealous hubbie, Ray!"

She sat at her desk and read the paragraph again. Bastards!

That was it: her name was out there.

Over on the Cans Fans Facebook page, the story had been picked up – or planted by Mo. To be fair, it was a mix of “Good for Ray! Good for her!” and the more negative comments, but it was the latter that stuck. There were photos, too: one awful one of her at Ray’s door, her face bleached out by the harsh flashlights so that it made her look moon-faced; another of her out shopping with Marcia yesterday – how had they got that? The pictures made her look fat and unkempt. She hated them. Sitting there at her desk, she just wanted to cry.

Her phone buzzed with a message from Marcia.

Hey chick. Or should I call u Brunette Beauty these days? ;) U OK there at the shit-fan interface?? xxx

Clever Marcia: pointing out the positives –
brunette beauty Emily Rivers
– when she knew Emily would be dwelling on all the negatives.

She made herself close the web browser, banishing Facebook from her screen.

Let them say what they like. It was done: her name was out there. They’d entered a new phase.

§

All day, she thought they were looking.

It was an open plan office at Hamilton and Chambers, and Emily occupied one of the desks clustered in the middle, with glass-fronted partners’ offices around the perimeter. Douglas Hamilton himself had made it clear that she was destined for one of these offices before long, but for now she was out in the open, exposed.

Every time someone glanced in her direction, she was convinced they knew. It wasn’t that they would all be reading tabloid gossip and Facebook chatter, but she knew how these things worked. Someone else would read it – a girlfriend, a teenage daughter – and they would recognize Emily’s name. There would be a text:
Don’t you work with someone called Emily Rivers?
Then a confirmation, followed by the
Do you know who she’s seeing?
and it would all follow from there.

She made it to lunchtime, and escaped to a deli for a sandwich, then went for an aimless walk through the city streets to avoid going back to her desk.

She had her phone with her, and kept checking for messages, but there was nothing. Ray must be busy, immersed in stripping back his over-engineered recordings in the heart of his little French mansion. Nothing more from Marcia, either – probably opting to give her a little space.

Nothing from Thom. No call to apologize. No begging for her to come home. No angry rants about her rock-star boyfriend.

It was just her: Emily and her paranoid fears.

She headed back to the office, late to return and with every intention of being early to leave.

§

Back at the house, she pulled up into the drive, Marcia silent in the passenger seat.

She’d texted Thom to warn him she was coming. She didn’t want to see him. She wanted him out of the way. But most of all, she didn’t want to just walk in unexpected. She hoped he’d be working, or at the pub, but he hadn’t replied so she didn’t know.

“You ready?”

Marcia nodded.

They approached the front door, Emily slid her key in, turned and pushed, and he was standing there in the kitchen doorway, waiting.

“A fucking
pop
star,” he said, his tone loaded with disdain.

She met his look. He wasn’t going to intimidate her. And she wasn’t going to ask how he knew. It didn’t matter.

“A fucking mega-star,” said Marcia at her side. “Our Emily’s going up in the world.”

“Let’s keep this civil,” said Emily. She’d brought Marcia for support, not to press all Thom’s angry inadequacy buttons. But now Thom was standing there, those tendons tight in his neck, his eyes narrowed to an angry glare. The last time she’d seen him like that she’d had to duck out of the way of his fist and they’d ended up staggering around the kitchen in a gruesome, off-balance embrace.

“Like I said in my message, I’ve just come for my things,” she continued. “I haven’t come for a fight. We can do that through the lawyers if we have to.”

“You really think he sees anything in you?” He wouldn’t let go. “You’re just a groupie. You’re making a fool of yourself. You look stupid.”

“She looks happy,” said Marcia. “But you wouldn’t recognize that, would you?”

Why was Marcia goading him like that? Was it simply that she’d spent so long biting her lip to protect Emily that now she had to let it all out? Emily put a hand on her friend’s arm, and said, “Leave it, Marcia, okay? Let’s just go up and get my things.”

She led the way upstairs.

The bedroom looked as if it had been ransacked. Drawers had been pulled out and removed, leaving blank spaces where they should be.
Her
drawers. Her dressing table had been cleared, as if someone had just swept it clear – a few things had been missed: her eyelash curlers were on the floor, along with a jar of nail polish and a hairbrush. She went to her wardrobe and slid one door open, but it was empty.

“What’s he done? Where is everything?” Marcia was seething.

Emily led the way through to the guest room where she’d been sleeping the last few nights she’d been here. Everything had been dumped here, on the bed and on the floor. Bundles of clothes. Her make-up. Her magazines and books. Her jewelry. Just dumped.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Let’s get things into bags and load up the car, okay?”

She picked up a blouse and started folding. Anything to stop herself from being sick at the sight of her life so callously gathered up and discarded here like this.

She didn’t recognize the name in her diary. ‘R Flaherty’. Someone else must have made the appointment for her. Someone who didn’t know how to spell the first name, the Irish Róisín by which everyone knew Ray Sandler’s wife.

It was Wednesday morning, and somehow Emily had made it this far through the week by keeping her head down and just getting on with things. She’d spoken to Ray again, and exchanged texts, but he was still distracted – working through the night with Rake on mixing the album, the two of them fueled by God knows what.

“I’m doing this for us, Emily,” he’d told her. “I’m doing this for you.” Some of that may well have been true, but really he was doing it for
him
. Finding his music again, rediscovering his reason to exist. It was beautiful to be a part of, but that didn’t stop Emily feeling abandoned just when she needed support.

Now, almost halfway through the week, she felt as if she was starting to come to grips with it all. Moving on. The social media buzz had pretty much died down: Ray said he’d told Mo to go easy, and not to use his private life to hype the album; maybe that had made the difference, or maybe it really was a story that didn’t hold much interest. ‘Ex-star shags a nobody’ is hardly going to sell many newspapers, after all.

She was getting through this. She was on top of things.

Until Ray’s wife walked into the office at Hamilton and Chambers.

§

Emily had been waiting for her mystery appointment so she saw Róisín the moment she walked through from Reception.

Tall – a little under six foot – and skinny as a lamp-post, everything about her was angular: the straight line of her shoulders, her cheekbones, her hips jutting through the sleek, thigh-length dress as she stood there getting her bearings. Her brunette hair was cropped close, just a little longer and swept to one side at the fringe. She posed like a model, and had the air of an aristocrat. She was someone who knew her place, and it was several social tiers above Emily.

Big hazel eyes snapped onto Emily and there was a brief nod, as if mentally ticking something off a checklist. She walked – like a catwalk model – across to Emily’s desk, and all eyes in the open plan area and the surrounding glass-fronted offices followed her.

“Emily Rivers,” she said, in a low Dublin drawl. “I recognized you from the photos. They never flatter, do they?”

Emily sat there, lost for words. Then she stood and gestured at a chair.

Róisín shook her head. “I’ll stand,” she said. “This won’t take long.”

Uncertain whether to seat herself again, Emily remained standing, and it felt like something out of a spaghetti Western, a stand-off at the ranch. Dodge City.

She tried to focus.

“What can I do for you, Ms Flaherty?” she asked.

Róisín’s eyes were exploring Emily’s face, like a scientist studying a new specimen.

“Raymond likes to have his adventures,” Róisín said. “He likes the
craic
. But you should know that it’s never serious. Just look at yourself, would you? Raymond and you are from different worlds. This is where you belong.” For a second or two she let her eyes leave Emily’s face and glance around the office. “But Raymond and me: our world is different. The rules are different. Do you understand? He always comes back. Always.”

With that, Róisín gave another brief nod, turned, and did her supermodel walk away through the office and out past Reception.

Emily stood there, trying not to let her mouth sag open.

She felt out of her depth, and she felt very, very plain.

She looked around and all eyes were on her.