Claudia Carroll - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Anyway, there’s no time to dwell on that because meanwhile Liz has already buzzed onto another major catch-up topic, as she brings me up to speed on her love life.

‘So in unrelated news,’ she says, laying into the vodka, ‘I’m still single. In fact, since I last saw you, I’ve had a total of about thirteen flings, roughly about the same number of shags and only one actual bona fide boyfriend. Crap, isn’t it? Oh and by “boyfriend”, just so you’re clear, I actually mean, “guy who I saw for longer than a single weekend”. Although, to be honest, he was one of those blokes who basically would have gone home with a gardening tool. And by now I’ve gone on so many blind dates, they should consider giving me a free guide dog. In other words, Annie, I still have a massive radar for emotionally unavailable guys with low self-esteem. Commit-twits. Half the time they don’t even have jobs either. So there you go. But, in a way, isn’t it reassuring to know that some things don’t change? You got lucky and meanwhile, I’m still out there chasing after nut-jobs.

‘Anyway,’ she breaks off, waving to the barman to send over another vodka, ‘like I always say, if Matt Damon was single and if he wasn’t famous and if he lived and worked in Dublin and if he knew me…I’m highly confident that we’d be dating, you know.’

‘That’s an awful lot of ifs, babe,’ I giggle.

‘Easy for you to say. Cos let’s face it, you married the only decent guy left in the entire northern hemisphere.’

I say nothing, just shake my head and smile quietly to myself, remembering fondly back to all the long, long nights we’d spend dissecting every aspect of Liz’s dating history, then putting it all back together again.

‘But if pressed on the subject by well-meaning but irritating relations, here’s what I always say,’ she laughs, knocking back the last dregs of her vodka and suddenly putting on a posh, cut-crystal English accent, ‘“One of the reasons I’ve never married, in spite of quite a bewildering array of offers, is a determination to never be ordered around.” Go on, Annie, I challenge you to name that one.’

This, by the way, is a game we’ve been playing ever since drama school – the Quotation Game. One of us throws out a line from a well-known play or movie, and the other has to guess where it’s from. And inevitably, with her sharp brain and her great memory for trivia, Liz wins.

‘Ehh…Glenn Close as the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons?’ I ask, gingerly.

‘Ten out of ten! You never lost your touch, babe. Anyway, enough about me. Tell me some of your news.’

‘News? From Stickens? Are you kidding me? I wish.’

‘Oh come on, hon, how’s that gorgeous big ride of a husband of yours? How’s your perfect married life in rural bliss?’

This is my cue to lie of course, not let the side down, smile brightly and say that everything is wonderful, lovely and perfect. All the while thinking to myself that seeing as how I’m in Dublin anyway, I might as well scatter the ashes of any sex life we once might have had into the River Liffey.

‘…which neatly leads me onto my next question,’ Liz says, munching on an ice cube from her empty vodka glass, just like she always used to. ‘If all goes well at your audition tomorrow and if you land the part, do you think Dan will be OK with…well,…you know. With everything. With the whole package, I mean. It’s one hell of a commitment. I mean, when you think about it, it’s something that could rock far less stable marriages then yours, hon.’

I look sheepishly across the table at her and take a sip of my drink.

‘The thing is, you see, Liz…he doesn’t know.’

It’s ridiculously late, almost two thirty in the morning before I’m finally pulling into The Moorings’ massive gravelled driveway, then tip-toeing up the main staircase to our bedroom. I almost have a mental map in my head now of the floorboards that creak versus the ones that don’t, so I creep in a ziz-zag pattern all the way upstairs, so as not to wake Dan. Honest to God, if you saw me, you’d swear I was off-my-head drunk, even though I was on nothing stronger than Diet Coke for the whole night.

It’s nearly pitch dark when I skulk into our bedroom, but I can still make out Dan’s huge, muscular silhouette, faintly red in the alarm clock light. He’s got the duvet covers flung off him, his thick dark bed-head is all skew-ways, and he’s wearing only a T-shirt; as ever, his hulking, six-foot-two frame taking over about ninety per cent of all available bed space. Plus he’s sleeping like he always does, in the shape of someone who’s just been washed up on a beach. Totally out for the count and utterly oblivious to the sword of Damocles that’s potentially hovering over both our heads.

Half of me is bursting to wake him up and tell him all, but the cautious half wins out; I just can’t. He’s worn out and exhausted and it would be mean. It’ll have to wait till the morning, simple as that.

Weird thing; it’s as though I’m looking at him and really seeing him clearly for the first time in ages. Noticing things I’d either blanked out about him or else completely taken for granted. His broad-shouldered, toned, fit body for one; trim and in fantastic shape from all the sheer physical exertion his job involves. The gentle sounds he makes whenever he’s in a really deep, exhausted sleep. His musky smell and the heat from his body, the sheer, pulsating warmth of him. All the joshing and messing we used to have way back in earlier, happier days, about how permanently freezing I am and about how he’s like a big, giant, human comforter, perfect for snuggling up to at night. Like I’m the air-conditioner in the summer and he’s the electric blanket in winter.

I get undressed as quietly as I can, trying my best to ignore the anxiety-knot that’s solidifying into what feels like a tight ball of cement right in the pit of my stomach. God, even just thinking about The Major Chat he and I are going to have to have at some point tomorrow is enough to get my heart palpitating all over again. What Dan might say…how he might react, what he might feel…or worse, what he might not bloody well feel at all.

My head is starting to thump with worry now, as I pull on a pyjama top and slip quietly into the comforting, dull warmth of the bed beside him. Because whether I like it or not, no amount of sugar glazing can disguise the fact that our marriage is on dangerously shaky ground and has been for a long, long time.

And now, here I am.

Potentially about to throw a hand grenade into it.

How Dan and I first met

Everyone I knew envied me growing up. Everyone. But I spent my entire youth shooting down the myth and telling anyone who’d listen that all resentment of my childhood was completely and utterly uncalled for. Thing is, my mother was, and still is, a diplomat, working for the Department of Foreign Affairs. Posted to Washington DC at the moment, as it happens, which is a massive promotion for her. For me though, it means I get to see and spend time with her an average of about once every twelve months if I’m lucky…but that’s a whole other story, ho hum.

Anyway, the thing about me was that I pretty much spent my formative years being brought up single-handedly by Mum as a lone-parent family. She and I, contra mundum.

My mother, by the way, embodies all the best qualities of Churchill, Henry V, Joan of Arc and Joanna Lumley. An incredible woman, your mother, is what everyone says about her and they’re dead right too.

My father, who I often think was intimidated by such a high-octane success story as Mum, had walked out on us when I was very small and now lives in Moscow with his new wife and my two little half-brothers who I’ve never met and most likely never will. I harbour him no ill-will though; it can’t have been easy for him, forever playing Bill Clinton to her globetrotting, ladder-climbing, hard-working, ambitious and ultimately far more successful Hillary. And believe me, my father ain’t no Bubba.