Page 48 of One Midnight With You
There was a car park round at the back of the building, so maybe his truck was there. Slowing down, she switched on her indicator as she approached the building. The doors were up, and she could see that one of the engines was out. Perhaps he was out with it. But if that was the case, his vehicle should definitely still be here.
Turning right into the entrance, she followed the road around to the back parking area. No pick-up there either. Hope fading, she drove into a space and pulled on the handbrake. He wasn’t here – and suddenly she felt like she shouldn’t have come because now she had the answer to a question she hadn’t been brave enough to ask outright.
Or maybe now was the time for a more direct approach.
With clammy hands, she picked up her phone and checked the location again.
Be here. Just be here.
Nope. Cormac Sweeney still wasn’t sharing his location.
Emmy closed her eyes, inhaled, exhaled.
Okay, do this.
Text. Cormac. Type.
Hey love, how’s your day going. Busy?
Send.
She waited, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, counting the passing seconds in her head. When she got to 100, she couldn’t stand it any more. Sod it. He came to her work earlier, so surely there shouldn’t be an issue with her dropping by to say hello? It wasn’t something she did often, but she’doccasionally stopped in with a hot meal or his favourite coffee if he was on a double shift.
Anxiety crackling under her skin, she switched off the engine and jumped out, barely registering the bitter cold of the evening.
Was this it? Was she about to find out, for absolutely definite, that two of the three men she’d loved the most in life were liars? Was Grandad Henry the only one who wasn’t in the Lying Hall of Shame?
She was about to press the entrance buzzer, when a bloke she didn’t recognise came out and held the door open for her to pass. She thanked him and veered around him, eyes scanning the back reception area and immediately spotting Jake, one of the officers who usually worked the opposite shift to Cormac.
Her instant smile was her very best attempt to act like nothing was wrong. ‘Jake! How are you doing?’
In his fifties and planning to retire soon, Jake had one of those slow, languid, Matthew McConaughey smiles that told of someone who didn’t get too flustered about the small things in life.
‘Hey Emmy, I’m good. How about you? And why don’t you have a jacket on? You’ll get pneumonia out there.’
‘I’ve got an inner glow that keeps me toasty,’ Emmy joked with him, like she would on any other day. Any other day that she wasn’t absolutely fricking terrified about the rest of her life. Right now, the risk of developing pneumonia was the least of her worries. ‘Listen, I was just passing and wanted so see if Cormac’s here by any chance?’
She left that one deliberately ambiguous. Even if he was on shift, he might not be here because he was out on a job. Although, Jake didn’t need the additional detail of the missing pick-up truck.
With every fibre of her being, she wanted him to say, ‘Sure, hold on and I’ll buzz him.’ She was praying for it. Manifesting it. Thinking it into existence until…
‘Nope, it’s Shift Two and Shift Three that’s covering today. Shift One are off now until the third because they covered Christmas.’ Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, as if it had just occurred to him that she should have known that, so she went straight for the bluff.
‘Yes, but he’d said he might drop in because he’d left his gym bag here. I was just over this way and thought I’d try to catch him. No worries, Jake,’ she said breezily as she began to back out of the building. ‘Give my love to Caron…’ Emmy had met Jake’s wife at a couple of station functions. ‘And Happy New Year.’
‘You too, Emmy. And tell Cormac the same.’ That was delivered with that slow, languid grin again.
Emmy managed to keep her smile up all the way back to the door, and had just burst back out into the cold when it cracked spectacularly, replaced by a weight on her chest that was making it hard to breathe.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He was lying. He’d been lying the whole time. For how long? Since the start of their relationship? Or was this something new? And who was she? Who was the woman he was texting, seeing, shagging so often she smelled her perfume on his clothes?
Some women might want to scream. To howl. To smash windows and slash tyres and Emmy didn’t blame them, but right now, all she wanted to do was to speak to him, to confront him. She checked her phone again, hoping with every fibre of her soul that he’d replied to her message with some kind of answer that would clear the whole thing up, make this all an innocent misunderstanding. She couldn’t even think what that would be, but she also couldn’t bear to accept the reality. They were over. Done. This was how her mum had felt two years ago and oh, theshit coincidence that they’d both had their worlds shattered at the same time of the year.
The phone screen was blank. No reply. No explanation.
Before she really processed what she was doing, she hit a button to speak to one of the only people who could make her feel better right now. Yvie’s number rang five or six times, then diverted to her voicemail. Strange. Yvie was usually joined at the hip to her phone when she was off duty. Must be in the shower or something. Emmy didn’t bother to leave a message.
Her finger hovered over the screen again. Her mum would be arriving at Gino’s about now. And her gran would either be enjoying her movie, or already in bed. Minnie turned in any time between 7p.m. and 3a.m., depending on her mood. ‘One of the perks of being old, my love,’ she would say. ‘I can do absolutely anything I please.’
