Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

‘Only if I can have a slice of cheesecake too,’ Leonie bargained. ‘I’m celebrating.’

‘What are you celebrating?’

‘You’ll have to buy me the cheesecake first.’

‘Spill the beans, Ms Delaney,’ Hannah ordered, plonking the tray with their lunch on it down on the table in the corner of the pub. ‘What are you celebrating? If it’s a man, I don’t want to know. Poor single old dears like me don’t want to hear about other people’s sex lives.’

Leonie laughed. ‘That’s moving a bit fast, even for me,’ she joked. ‘Particularly as I haven’t actually met him yet.’

‘So it is a man,’ Hannah said triumphantly. ‘I knew it. You are a terrible tart! You know, Leonie, you only ever light up when it’s something to do with a man.’

‘I might be unlit when I meet him, because it mightn’t work out,’ Leonie pointed out. ‘He’s one of my personal advert men and I got the courage to phone him the other day. He sounds amazing, so friendly and clever and sensitive and…’ She grimaced. ‘Then I get the collywobbles when I think about Bob and what a disaster that turned out to be. He sounded lovely on the phone too, so this guy could be terrible.’

‘Nonsense. He’s probably wonderful.’ Hannah took a bite of her tunafish sandwich.

‘I’m hoping for a six foot blond Adonis with a body to die for and healing hands,’ Leonie said dreamily. Then gasped. Talk about putting your foot in it. That was almost a perfect description of poor Hannah’s Felix. Leonie had finally seen him on a sitcom on ITV and he was gorgeous. Gorgeous and somewhere else. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘Sorry about what?’ Hannah didn’t appear perturbed; she continued eating her sandwich. ‘I’ve got to be at the next house in half an hour,’ she apologized, ‘so I’ve got to wolf this down. Spill the beans on the new bloke.’

‘His name’s Hugh.’

‘Wonderful name,’ Hannah said delightedly. ‘You can sing that Whitney Houston song now: “I Will Always Love Hugh”! Geddit? Hugh and not You?’

‘I’m glad you’re an estate agent and not trying to break into the comedy circuit,’ Leonie said calmly. ‘But I digress. Hugh – ’ she shot Hannah a stern look – ‘works in a bank. He’s an investment adviser and he’s separated too.’

‘That’s good.’

‘He’s older than me and he’s mad into dogs. He’s got three: a spaniel, a Jack Russell and one Heinz 57 variety. Ludlum, Harris and Wilbur, after the novelists. He’s into adventure thrillers.’

‘And you discovered all that over the phone? He must be some talker.’

‘He is,’ Leonie said happily. ‘Imagine if we got married and at the wedding we had to talk about how we met and what we remembered about it. I’d have to say I fell in love with him when he told me he rescued Wilbur from certain death when someone tried to drown him as a puppy. Someone had put him in a sack and thrown him into the Grand Canal. If not for Hugh, poor Wilbur would be dead.’ Her face had that moony, dreamy quality that said she was in fantasy land. And she was.

Leonie was picturing the wedding, complete with four dogs in their Sunday best as bridesdogs (Penny) and groomsdogs (Wilbur, Harris and Ludlum) with beribboned sachets of Mixed Ovals on the tables instead of pastel fondant sweets.

It was Hannah’s turn to deliver a stern look. ‘Leonie, stop confusing people who love animals with people you’re going to fall in love with. It’s not the same thing. And I wouldn’t mention weddings to him, either. Men aren’t as keen on the idea as women are, I think.’

Leonie finished her sandwich and started on the cream-laden slice of cheesecake. ‘You’re right. I have become a bit obsessed with weddings since Ray and Fliss got married. I can’t help it. That Calvin Klein dress haunts me. Every time I pass Madame Lucia’s Bridal Boutique in town, I peer in the window to see if there’s anything suitably elegant that I should put a deposit down for. I mean, it’s mad. Mel caught me looking in one day and I had to pretend I was straightening my rain hat in the window.’

‘When’s the big date?’

‘Saturday night.’

‘That’s good, because at least you know he’s really separated and not just married but pretending to be separated to get women,’ Hannah said without thinking.

Leonie looked shocked.

‘Some people do use personal adverts to spice up their life when they’re actually already involved,’ Hannah explained, sorry she’d started this. ‘But a date on a Friday or Saturday is a good sign.’

‘I’m not sure any of it’s a good sign,’ Leonie said, still looking startled.

‘Sorry. I really am, Leonie. I’m so anti-men right now I’m turning into an embittered old cow. I should just stay at home and write a feminist polemic and be done with it. Hugh sounds really nice, and well done you for getting the courage to phone him. Ask him if he has any brothers,’ she joked. ‘No! Only kidding, don’t. I’m not in any condition to see a man. I don’t want a man, either. They’re nothing but trouble.’

‘No word from Felix, then?’ Leonie asked delicately.

Her friend shook her head. ‘Not a whisper. He left a very nice Paul Smith T-shirt behind in the laundry basket and I only found it the other day buried right at the bottom. I cut it into pieces and now I’m using it to clean the bathroom,’ Hannah said with quiet satisfaction.

‘Anyway, I’m over him. Felix was proof that I’m not the sort of woman who should get involved with men. It’s too messy. Maybe I should be ultra modern and become a mistress. I was reading this article in the Daily Mail about a woman who says she’s got her career and a bloke once a week and it suits her fine. His wife gets the dirty socks.’

‘You’d hate that,’ Leonie argued. ‘You’re an all-or-nothing sort of person.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. So I’m sticking to nothing,’ Hannah said firmly. ‘No men, ever again.’

She was sitting quietly at her desk later that afternoon when the phone rang. Hannah picked it up absently, her mind on her paperwork, and then she froze. She would have recognized that voice anywhere. Low, soft and light-hearted, as if something had amused him and he was quietly laughing at it while he was speaking to you.

‘Hannah, great to talk to you.’

She slammed the phone down with such force that Sasha, Steve and Donna all looked up from their respective desks in surprise.

‘The phone went dead and I got that high-pitched squealing noise,’ Hannah lied blatantly. She was not about to say that Harry-fucking-Spender had phoned her out of the blue, after eighteen months in South America, eighteen months of swanning up and down the bloody Amazon having a whale of a time while she tried to pick up the pieces of her life again. How dare he? How bloody dare he? The computer document she’d been working on disappeared and the monitor darkened into screensaver. Everyone in the office had a different one. Hannah’s was a kitten chasing after a ball of wool. Normally it amused her, watching the kitten pounce excitedly on the wool only to see it bounce away. She slapped the return key sharply and the kitten vanished. Her phone rang again. Without betraying the knot in her stomach at the sound, Hannah picked up the receiver and cradled it between her neck and chin the way she normally did.

‘Hello, Hannah Campbell speaking,’ she said for the second time in sixty seconds, her voice professional.

It was him.

‘Don’t hang up, Hannah,’ he begged, not sounding quite as amused this time.

Tough titty, she thought victoriously as she put the receiver down again without speaking another word.

‘Must be something wrong with my line,’ she said to the others, wide-eyed.

When the phone finally rang for the third time, it was one of the people to whom she’d shown the Enniskerry house earlier that afternoon.

Relieved that it wasn’t Harry, Hannah heaved a sigh of relief. He’d got the message, thankfully. He wouldn’t be ringing back. She wondered briefly how he’d got her work number but realized that people gossiped and that one of their group of friends – Hannah’s ex-friends – was bound to know where she was working and had passed on the information. Dublin was such a small city: you couldn’t hiccup without someone remarking on the fact a month later.

She stayed in the office until six, trying to catch up on paperwork. The business was booming, turnover was up by three hundred per cent, David James had announced proudly. Which was wonderful, but it also meant there really weren’t enough hours in the day. Sipping the coffee Sasha had brought her, Hannah kept her head bent and worked. But at the back of her mind remained niggling thoughts about Harry. She’d been so heartbroken when he’d left. After ten years together, she’d never have imagined that he could leave her, but he had, to find himself ‘because he was being stifled by their relationship,’ apparently. At the time, it felt like the worst thing in the world, but the passage of time had dimmed the pain. Guys like Jeff and Felix had helped, except that she hadn’t meant to fall in love with Felix. She hadn’t planned to fall in love ever again. Harry should have cured her of that. Felix certainly did.

As she worked, she thought about Harry, about how he used to spend hours wandering around in his dressing gown, something which had irritated her beyond belief. He’d been such a slob. If he didn’t have to get up and go into work, Harry would slouch around half-dressed all day, phoning Hannah at work and asking her to buy milk/ fags/bread on the way home. And she used to do it, she remembered with shame. She’d been a bigger eejit than he was to let him get away with it. He never washed a cup or emptied an ashtray if he could help it, and she’d rarely remonstrated with him about it either. More fool Hannah.

Oh yeah, and the novel. Harry’s great opus. He’d been talking about it for years, how he was going to be able to give up the day job when it was written and how it’d win literary prizes left, right and centre. He was worse when he got drunk, telling her he’d be famous some day, famous and filthy, stinking rich. Oh yes, you mark my words, incredibly rich and famous. Thirty seconds later, he’d ask her for a loan of a tenner so he could run out to the twenty-four-hour garage and buy cigarettes and Pringles.

Donna was still at her desk when Hannah finally switched off her computer and tidied up the manila folders on her desk.

‘Fancy a drink?’ Hannah asked, suddenly overcome with the desire to talk to someone about Harry’s phone call. She liked talking to Donna: the other woman never judged, never jumped to conclusions and never breathed a word of their conversations to anyone else.

‘I’d love to,’ confessed Donna, ‘but I’m picking Tania up from a friend’s house in an hour and I’ve got some paperwork to finish first. Sorry.’

‘That’s fine, no sweat. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ve got an early start anyway, I don’t know why I’m even thinking about the pub.’ Hannah laughed. ‘See you tomorrow.’