Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

Before Joe, she’d never needed to phone anyone to tell them her news. But she’d got used to it with him, and now, without him, she felt the lack of it deeply. Damn the rest of the coupled-up world. She was fed up with them.

When she got to the office, the team happily discussed Izzie’s idea before people raced off on their lunch breaks.

‘Hey, you going out for lunch?’ Carla asked her.

‘No.’

‘Good. I want to talk to you.’

Carla led a dead-eyed Izzie out on to the fire escape for a bit of privacy.

‘Yeah, what’s up?’ said Izzie, wrapping her arms around herself. She felt cold – no matter what she did, she hadn’t been warm since last night. It was like the combination of rain and sheer emotional pain had sent a chill into her bones. Even the buzz from the SupaGirl! idea couldn’t warm her up.

‘There’s a bit of prime gossip going around,’ Carla said, ‘’bout a certain married Wall Street gentleman who’s having a hot thing with a model-agency booker. Seems somebody’s driver said to another driver who said it to a hairdresser who told a client – possibly lots of clients. Hey, you know this town, everybody loves to talk – and this particular everybody happens to be a friend of mine and said it to me.’

‘New York whispers are like Chinese whispers, only deadlier, huh?’ Izzie quipped nervously. There was no way Carla could know about her and Joe.

‘Tell me it’s not you,’ Carla said.

Izzie bit her lip. It was only a momentary pause, but it was enough for Carla.

‘Oh fuck, it is you, isn’t it?’

Izzie didn’t want to look Carla in the eye. She couldn’t face the reproach she knew she’d see there. How could she explain this?

I didn’t know the full story that first day – dumb, I agree, but I didn’t know. I didn’t think. He was so charming and sexy and we connected, and by the time he said he was with his wife but not with her, well, I was hooked…

‘Izzie, you cannot be serious! What has happened to you? I should have known,’ Carla raged. ‘I knew something was wrong and I hoped you’d tell me what it was, but I never thought it was a man. A married man! Are you nuts? How many women do we know who’ve gone that route, and it always ends up bad. Always. The only person who wins is the guy.’

‘Look, he’s married, but they’re not together –’ began Izzie, thinking that it was a bit rich that her secret was out now that she’d finally decided it was over between her and Joe.

‘Puhleese!’

‘It’s not like it sounds,’ snapped Izzie. ‘You know me, Carla: I’m not the sort of woman who’s looking for a Fortune 500 guy to tear him away from his wife so I can cut up my subway pass and never work again. I just thought he was a guy, he liked me, we saw each other and –’

‘– and he told you it was over with her?’

‘Living separate lives. Together for the kids.’

Carla actually hit her forehead with the palm of her hand, the international ‘you are a moron’ gesture. ‘And you believed him?’

‘Yes! He’s not a liar, honestly.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about him, then? I heard nothing ‘bout Mr Wall Street. Why? Because you knew something wasn’t right, didn’t you? And you knew I’d talk you out of it.’

Izzie shot her friend an anguished gaze. ‘I thought it was the real thing, Carla. You can’t fake love, and he loved me. I loved him.’

‘So why not tell me?’

‘It was all so complicated. He loves his kids and he wants to make it all right for them, Carla. He’s not a bastard, honestly. He’s the real deal and I knew he needed time,’ she said lamely.

‘Time? Yeah, time to play an away game until he rolled back to his wife.’

Izzie burst into tears, a move which startled both of them.

‘Jeez,’ said Carla.

‘It’s over anyway,’ Izzie said, weeping. ‘I believed him about needing time and then I found out he was going to a party with his wife, and it didn’t seem like such separate lives any more, so I finished with him.’

‘That’s something,’ Carla remarked.

‘No, it’s not,’ sobbed Izzie. ‘Because I’ve never felt worse in my whole life. I still believe him, but it’s too much, too complicated. I can’t be involved in that and I had to get out before…’

She couldn’t finish the sentence. Before she fell so painfully in love with him that she’d stay no matter what, was what she wanted to say. Except she’d already done that, it seemed. She didn’t care what was going on in Joe’s life, she just wanted to be part of it. Her moral compass was broken and she didn’t care.

‘Izzie!’ a voice rang out from inside. ‘Urgent call for you from Ireland. Some emergency…’

Izzie gratefully took the cup of coffee that Carla offered her and wrapped her hands around it. Their cube farm in the Perfect-NY offices wasn’t cold, but she was icy inside at the news. Darling Gran, one constant in an always messed-up world, was in hospital back home in Tamarin and she might die.

The news had shocked all thought of Joe out of her mind.

Instead, she thought of Lily, frail now more than slender, with those faded blue eyes staring out wisely at the world. Kindness shone out of her: kindness and wisdom.

Izzie couldn’t bear to think that her grandmother’s wisdom would be gone for ever when she needed it so much.

There were so many things she still needed to know, so many things she wanted to tell Gran – now, she might never be able to.

And the one thing she desperately wanted to share, how she felt about Joe, she’d never be able to tell. To a woman of her grandmother’s generation, there could be nothing worse than infidelity, and Izzie simply couldn’t bear to see Gran’s eyes cloud over with the knowledge that Izzie was having an affair with a man who was still married. If Carla, who was as liberal as it was possible to be without being a radical lesbian feminist, had been shocked by the news, imagine how devastated Gran would be. Granted, Carla’s anger was only because she felt Izzie had been conned, but still.

‘Oh, Gran,’ Izzie prayed, willing magic into the air as if that might breathe health into her grandmother thousands of miles away, ‘please, please don’t go.’

‘It was a massive stroke,’ Dad had said on the phone. ‘They found her in the courtyard outside the church. Luckily she’d fallen against the back of the seat or else she’d have cracked her head on the slabs and then, well…’ His voice had trailed off.

Her father couldn’t say ‘she would certainly have died’. Not dealing with the hard stuff was Brendan’s forte. Izzie knew it was not by accident that she’d fallen for an alpha male with vigour, courage and the ability to face life.

The noticeable differences between the man she loved and her father was the stuff undoubtedly covered on the first day of the Psychology Made Simple class.

‘When did it happen?’

‘This morning after Mass.’

‘What do the doctors say?’ Izzie steeled herself.

‘Not much…she’s in intensive care and they’ve got all these tests to do, but nobody will really say anything to me…’

Izzie could imagine her father, taller than she was, but without a shred of her fierce energy, looking round the ICU for a doctor, but not able to find anyone to ask because they were all rushing and he didn’t like to bother anyone.

Sweet and gentle was a lovely way to live, but it didn’t work in the high-speed, intensely pressured atmosphere of an emergency room.