The Last Kiss Goodbye (3 page)

‘Yes, actually. Just drinks with a few friends.’

He smiled. ‘You enjoy yourself, Abigail. You deserve it.’

She grinned in reply. She hadn’t been looking forward to her night out with the girls, but now she decided it was just what she needed. She ran up the basement stairs to the ground floor, where light flooded the Institute’s atrium. Back to civilisation, she thought, glancing at her mobile phone and seeing that she had missed a call in the signal-less basement.

She dialled to retrieve the message, and felt sick to the pit of her stomach when she heard it.

‘Abs, it’s me. Nick. Call me back. We need to talk.’

Chapter Two

‘Can you believe he wants to
talk
?’ said Abby from her bar stool in Hemingway’s cocktail lounge in Wimbledon Village. She felt sure she was slurring her words, and she had only been here twenty minutes.

‘What do you think he’s got to say for himself?’ said Suze spearing a bright green olive with a tooth pick.

‘Nothing I want to hear,’ said Abby, feeling more and more provoked by the phone call from her husband.

‘Look. The manager has found us a booth,’ said Anna, jumping up and grabbing the pitcher of Pimm’s. ‘Come on, before a gaggle of sexy tennis players beats us to it.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ smiled Abby, although her heart certainly wasn’t in laughing.

It was Wimbledon fortnight, and there were always celebrities or famous sports stars to be seen around the smart SW19 postcode after the day’s play at the All England Club had drawn to a close.

Anna, Suze and Ginny, Abby’s three closest friends, had decided that she had been hibernating far too long, and that a night out in Wimbledon’s buzziest fortnight was just the ticket to resuscitate her social life.

Normally she would have agreed. Normally this was her favourite time of the whole year, a time to sit out at pavement cafés, joking with her friends and watching the world go by. But tonight it had been tempting to head straight for home when she got off the tube – her little terraced house was just off the foot of the hill on the walk up to the Village – just as she had done every night for the past six weeks.

Leaving work, Abby had felt some enthusiasm for her night out, but now she was here, she knew she wasn’t in the mood for laughing, drinking cocktails or pretending that she was carefree. She didn’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone. Deep down, she knew that she couldn’t stay a recluse for ever. She knew she had to get back out into the world and make some decisions. She knew that she had to man up and finally talk to her husband, because she couldn’t carry on ignoring his messages. But if the time had now come to confront Nick Gordon, she still didn’t know what to say, and she was hoping that a conversation with the girls might provide her with some answers.

‘Ginny’s here,’ said Suze, as they all slid into the cream leather booth. Abby groaned silently at the sight of the tall brunette walking into the bar. Any other time she would have been delighted to see her old friend; along with Anna, a high-flying lawyer, Ginny was her most capable mate, a kick-ass, no-nonsense financier, the sort of person you wanted on your side in a crisis. But she was also Nick’s sister, and even though she had made all the right noises about her ‘idiot brother’, calling Abby every few days, sending details of counsellors and therapists and little parcels of macaroons and biscuits, Abby never felt as if she was entirely on her side.

‘What have I missed?’ asked Ginny, sliding in next to Anna.

‘Nick’s rung,’ said Suze, looking up from her cocktail.

‘And did you speak to him?’ asked Ginny, as if she were addressing a boardroom.

Abby shrank into her chair and shook her head.

‘He’s called six times already this week. I haven’t spoken to him but he won’t leave me alone. At this rate I won’t be needing a divorce. I’ll need a restraining order.’

Her friends laughed politely, but she could tell that the D word was like a grenade thrown into the conversation.

‘Have you at least spoken to any of the counsellors I told you about? Melanie Naylor is particularly excellent,’ pressed Ginny in her no-nonsense style. ‘Very high-profile client list.’

‘But counselling would mean I want to save my marriage.’

‘You’ve got to give it a try,’ replied Ginny bluntly.

‘I’m not saying you’re being too harsh, Abby . . .’ began Suze, topping up her glass until the Pimm’s hovered less than a millimetre beneath the rim.

‘But you’re saying I’m being too harsh,’ said Abby, feeling cornered.

‘You can’t avoid him for ever,’ said Anna more kindly. ‘Deleting his messages doesn’t mean you can wipe out everything that’s happened.’

‘How could I ever forget that?’ said Abby, reminded once more of the moment her life had been blown apart.

A text. That was how she’d found out that her husband had been unfaithful. They had been driving to a friend’s house for Sunday lunch, and had stopped at a petrol station for some fuel. Nick had run out to pay and had left his phone on the seat, the same phone Abby had used ten minutes earlier to tell the friend that they were running late, because her own phone was out of juice.

She had expected to see a few platitudes from their host.
Don’t worry! The chicken is still roasting! Take your time

Instead she had read a message from some woman whose name she still didn’t know. A handful of words that had been like a nuclear explosion in her marriage.

Please. Let’s just see each other again. I know it’s scary but I think we are good together. X

The smell of the petrol fumes and the treachery of the words had almost made her vomit. She had looked up and seen Nick running across the forecourt, two bars of her favourite chocolate clutched in his fist, smiling despite the lashing of spring rain, and for a second she had wondered whether she should pretend not to have seen the message. Wondered whether she should just let her life carry on, unaffected by what she had read.

With a matter of seconds to make that choice, she had handed him his mobile as soon as he got into the car.

‘You’ve had a text,’ she had said simply, and immediately caught the flicker of panic across his face, knowing before he had even read the message that things would never be the same again.

When he did read it, he didn’t try to deny anything.

By the time he had croaked ‘I’m sorry, Abs,’ she had stumbled out of the car, her sight clouded with tears, the sound of car horns ringing in her ears. Nick had followed her, his long strides quickly catching up with hers. He’d grabbed her shoulders, and perhaps to an onlooker, thought Abby some time later, they might have looked like a couple in a Nicholas Sparks movie poster about to have a passionate embrace in the rain.

Instead he had explained that
she
was a client and that he had got drunk on one of his many business overnighters and ended up in bed with her. It was a one-off, he had pleaded. She had meant nothing, he’d had too much to drink and was depressed. But Abby couldn’t bear to be near him after that. Couldn’t bear for him to touch her. She’d hailed the nearest taxi, and by the time he returned home, she had cleared out his things, stuffed it all – even a beautiful pink cashmere scarf he had bought for her birthday, and some tickets for an outdoor cinema event – into bin bags and left them in the hall, screaming at him to leave, hurling every obscenity she could think of at him.

Abby played with the stem of her cocktail glass.

‘Thanks for coming out tonight.’

The girls nodded in encouragement.

‘Can’t pass up the chance to spot Federer,’ smiled Anna, trying to lighten the mood.

‘So, what’s everyone’s news?’ said Abby more brightly. The last thing she wanted was to dwell on her own problems.

‘Work, work, work,’ groaned Ginny. ‘I’ve got a deal on that is taking for ever.’

‘And I think I have become the anti-Bridezilla,’ said Anna.

‘Anna, you are getting married in six weeks. You’re supposed to be getting teary with the florist by now. Having hissy fits with the cupcake supplier, that sort of thing,’ quipped Ginny.

‘There are going to be no cupcakes at my wedding,’ laughed Anna.

Ginny grinned. ‘Killjoy.’

‘Well I went to see a clairvoyant this week, and she said I’m about to get swept off my feet,’ announced Suze, who had been single ever since she finally left her cheating sports-agent boyfriend Terry.

‘I’d love to be swept off my feet,’ said Ginny with feeling. ‘Not just because I’m so bloody busy I haven’t got time for go-slow romance. I adore the idea of the grand gesture, like getting whisked off to Paris or Rome.’

‘Like Mikhail Baryshnikov did with Carrie in the last season of
Sex in the City
,’ noted Abby.

‘But look how that turned out,’ replied Anna cynically.

‘What happened?’ Popular culture always seemed to have passed Ginny by.

‘He hit her,’ replied Suze. ‘Petrovsky slapped Carrie.’

‘Yes, but she was in love with Big anyway. It would never have worked,’ pointed out Abby, remembering every moment of her favourite show. ‘And then Big came to Paris to rescue her.’

‘Now that was a grand gesture,’ nodded Suze sagely.

The waitress brought over some bar snacks, and Abby nibbled at a chicken wing.

‘I don’t know about grand gestures,’ said Anna, directing her attention at Suze. ‘I think they can be hollow. It’s easy to spend money, or shout loud. I think it’s the little things that mean a lot. I love it when Matt goes out of his way to help me without me even asking. Or buys me a book I mentioned in passing ages ago.’

Ginny pulled a buzzing mobile from her handbag.

‘Bloody hell. New York,’ she muttered before excusing herself and exiting the bar to take the call. Abby felt her shoulders slump in relief.

‘She’s Nick’s sister, but she wants the best for you,’ said Anna intuitively.

Abby looked at her friend. ‘Which is what?’

There was an awkward silence.

‘What are you going to do, Abs?’ said Anna finally.

‘Get a solicitor. Fill out a few forms. Boom. File for divorce. I think that’s how it goes, isn’t it?’ Her voice cracked, and she tried to steady herself with a long swig of Pimm’s.

‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’

‘What’s the alternative? That I
forgive
him? I can’t. I’ve gone over and over it in my mind, but he slept with someone else, and I can’t get past that. The betrayal, the lies . . . the trust has gone. And once it’s gone, you can’t get it back. Things could never be the same between us again.’

‘But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you,’ said Anna thoughtfully. ‘Men are weak. If it’s put in front of them, they’ll take it. Look at Tiger Woods.’

‘Let’s not,’ said Suze, rolling her eyes. ‘He had more than one mistress come out of the woodwork.’

‘She wasn’t Nick’s mistress,’ replied Abby sharply. Suze gave her a cynical look.

‘Don’t go getting all protective over him.’

‘I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting myself,’ said Abby.

‘You never know what you can forgive until it happens. I see it all the time at work,’ said Anna. She was a media lawyer, and the bulk of her time was spent securing press injunctions to protect her clients’ indiscretions. ‘All these people doing stupid, selfish things – making sex tapes, having affairs with co-stars – and time and again the wives or husbands forgive them.’

‘Maybe it’s different with celebrities,’ replied Abby.

‘It’s just easier to forgive, easier to put up with it,’ said Suze, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Terry was an absolute dog. The amount of times I turned a blind eye to lipstick on his collar because the alternative meant moving out, looking for a new flat, being on my own and going through the whole rigmarole of finding someone else. Sometimes it’s easier to just keep quiet, even though each time I forgave him, I lost another piece of self-respect.’

‘Don’t look now,’ said Anna, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘but I think that blond guy at the bar is checking you out, Abs.’

Abby hadn’t felt sexy or attractive for a very long time, and the thought of someone eyeing her up made her jumpy. She shot a discreet glance in the direction of where her friend was looking. A handsome twenty-something man was indeed looking her way, an amused half-smile on his lips.

‘Damn, Abs, he’s gorgeous,’ hissed Suze.

Abby grabbed her drink, wondering if everyone in the bar could see her blushing. Hell, you could probably see it from space.

‘Not interested,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m no longer interested in men. It’s all about cats and cupcakes from now on.’

Suze grabbed the jug of Pimm’s and upended it into her glass.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a crack at him?’

Abby smiled and shook her head.

‘In that case, I’m going to get pissed and have a go myself. You never know, Anna, I might end up bringing a plus-one to your wedding after all.’

As they watched Suze approach the handsome stranger, Abby couldn’t help but feel a spark of admiration for her friend, so hopeful in her quest for true love.

Anna folded her arms on the edge of the table.

‘People make mistakes, Abby. I don’t think it’s so bad to forgive,’ she said quietly.

‘Whose side are you on here?’ Abby said briskly, then stopped herself, not wanting to be unkind to Anna, who these days she considered her closest friend, the one she felt she had most in common with, the one she knew she could turn to in a crisis.
Had
turned to, in the days after her separation, when Anna had spent hours on the phone with her, not judging, just listening.

‘I’m on your side, Abs,’ said Anna, putting her hand on her forearm. ‘I just know how much you love Nick. How much he loves you and how good you were together.’