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

‘What was she like?’ he asked.

‘A lot like my dad: vague and artistic. She painted. She’d walk around with paint smudges all over her clothes and on her face and not even notice. She’d go to the supermarket in her slippers and laugh if you mentioned it to her. Bohemian, I guess. She had quite dark skin, not like me, and she loved the sun. She had a mole on her back that went very dark, and she didn’t think anything of it. By the time they realised it was cancerous, she had only weeks to live.’

Joe said nothing, just carried on gently stroking her hair.

‘Dad went to pieces, like today,’ she sighed. ‘Nothing new there. Gran stepped in and took over. She raised me.’

‘Tell me about her,’ he said, moving so that they were both lying on the couch now, his long legs hanging over the end, Izzie feeling fragile against him, the way she always did because he was such a big man.

So she talked: about Gran blazing a trail in Tamarin by leaving to train as a nurse in London during the war, of the stories she’d told of being a twenty-one-year-old in another country, and how she’d coped.

‘That’s probably why I wanted to travel when I left school,’ Izzie said. ‘I’d grown up hearing Gran talk about another world outside Tamarin, and it felt like what I had to do.’

‘But she went back to Ireland, though, didn’t she?’

Izzie nodded. ‘She went back after the war, married my granddad and has been there ever since.’

‘I know you’re going home, but not for good, right? I don’t want you to leave New York,’ he murmured. ‘Your grandmother needs you now, but not to stay. I need you even more, Izzie.’

He moved his hand from stroking her hair to gently trace the curve of her waist and hip, settling around the firm swelling of her buttocks.

Fear and death made people think of love, Gran had told her once. That thought flickered through Izzie’s consciousness as she felt her body answering Joe’s hunger.

People regularly went home from funerals and made love, she knew, to banish the cold, hard reality of death. Gran wouldn’t die, she just couldn’t. As if the fierce passion of their lovemaking could keep her grandmother’s heart beating through some spiritual intervention, Izzie Silver kissed her lover back with more hunger than ever before.

Life and love couldn’t end, it couldn’t.

They ended up in the bed after all, since the couch was too small for both of them. Joe had lifted Izzie up and carried her to the bed, throwing off the pretty pillows that decorated it so they had more room, pinioning her to the bed with his weight as he adored her body, kissing, sucking, licking. The second time was gentler, more loving and less fierce.

When he was inside her, he cradled her face in his hands and gazed into her eyes with such love that Izzie wanted to cry, but he didn’t say anything, only called her name as he came.

After their exertions, Joe lay beside her, breathing deeply. Izzie was sure he was asleep, and she lay curled against him.

As she lay there, she allowed herself to dream. What if he said that this was the time for him to leave his home and come to her?

You need me now, Izzie. I’m going to be there for you. I’m coming to Tamarin too.

And Izzie, who knew she’d never, ever have asked him for that because she wasn’t the sort of woman to walk round with a chisel in her purse, trying to prise him off his wife, would say:

Thank you, I’d hoped you’d say that, but I’d never ask.

If she’d asked, she’d be no better than the sort of woman she hated: the professional girlfriends who picked married men with big bank balances and used skills like safe-crackers to get their hands on the money. That wasn’t Izzie.

But if he came to her now, how wonderful it would be. She’d be able to cope a little better if he were with her, holding her hand, sitting beside her in the hospital with Gran.

‘This is the man I love, Gran,’ she’d whisper, and even, God forbid, if Gran never woke up, Izzie would have brought Joe to meet her. She so wanted Gran’s approval of the man she loved. Even though it was all so unconventional and difficult, it would work out, because love found a way, didn’t it?

The love of her life stretched beside her and then moved so that he was propped up on one arm, staring down at her.

She gazed up at him happily, eyes tracing the familiar lines of his face and loving what she saw.

‘Izzie, I need to know why you came to the museum last night,’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked, her happy daydream crashing to the ground. ‘Can’t you guess?’

‘Well, no.’

This time, she sat up and pulled the sheet protectively over her breasts.

‘Oh, come on, Joe,’ she said. ‘It’s not rocket science. You’re one of the smartest people I know. Surely you can figure it out.’

‘You wanted to look at my wife?’

He couldn’t say her name: couldn’t say ‘Elizabeth’. As if saying it here in Izzie’s apartment would taint her. Elizabeth was the one to be protected, not the other way round.

Izzie shivered at what this meant.

‘I could look at her in any magazine, Joe,’ she said calmly. ‘I wanted to see you together – don’t you get it? You and her, together. Wouldn’t you want to see me and him together, if I was the one who was married?’ she asked incredulously.

‘If you were married, we wouldn’t be together,’ Joe said bluntly.

‘What?’

‘I wouldn’t want to share you.’ He shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t be an option. I’d never see someone who was involved with anyone else.’

Rage boiled up inside her.

‘You bastard!’ she hissed. ‘I get to share you, but you’d refuse to share me. You are so hypocritical.’

‘Me, hypocritical? I don’t think so.’ Joe’s eyes were like cold steel and they bored into her.

Izzie was shocked by the ferocity of his glare.

‘What I didn’t think we were getting into was you turning up like a stalker to watch me and my wife with our friends.’

His words actually hurt her physically. She hadn’t known words could do that.

‘I can’t believe you’re saying this to me,’ she said. She no longer felt angry, just very scared and very shocked. This was not how it was supposed to be. Where was the Joe who’d looked down on her as they’d made love, as if he’d like to gaze at her face with love for ever.

The words just slipped out. ‘I thought you loved me?’

The silence gaped like one of the valleys near the New Mexico pueblo where she’d been just days before. Outside, police cars roared past, droning sirens into the afternoon.

‘I thought you and Elizabeth were just together for the kids? That’s what you told me. Is that the truth or not?’

‘Izzie –’ he began, ‘I do love you, but it’s not that simple.’

And then she knew for sure. Carla had been right. He hadn’t loved her. He’d loved making love to her, sure, but as for the Real Thing – that was all one-sided. Her side.