Page 53 of Secrets in the Snow
I feel the need to emphasize just how much I agree with him.
‘Aidan, I’m not an overly ambitious person career wise, nor will I ever strive to be as successful in business as you are, but I’m proud and I’m independent, or at least I once was before I married Jude,’ I explain to him, my heart now running away with itself.
He never takes his eyes off me as I speak, drinking in my every word. Jude would have interrupted me at least twice by now, or contradicted me in some shape or form, or told me not to be so silly or dreamy.
‘I’m a fairly simple person, deep down,’ I explain. ‘So Isuppose my real dream is never to have my heart broken again and to have a content and loving home life, as simple as that. I just want peace in my heart. It’s something I’ve never had before.’
Aidan takes my hand and kisses it slowly. He then looks up at me beneath his black eyelashes, and I reach out to touch the dark stubble on his face with the back of my hand. His true beauty, although his good looks are very noticeable to strangers, is very much within his skin. It’s in his heart and his soul, and that’s what makes me like him more and more.
‘What about you?’ I ask him.
‘The same,’ he says to me. ‘It sounds like we both want the same. All the rest is bullshit and noise. All of this life I have here is gloss and just so empty without someone to share it with who loves you and who you love in return. I want exactly the same as you, Roisin. And I think I’ve finally found it.’
The only lingering downside of what he says is the thought of leaving him again tomorrow when we go back to Ireland to our own very ordinary but quite blissful little existence. It already sears my heart, but we have one more day before we have to say goodbye. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to him ever again.
‘I’d better go and get ready to talk business over a late dinner,’ he says, his eyes full of regret and pain now. ‘I’ll be in touch first thing, I promise.’
I walk him to the door and feel my tummy rumble at the thought of dinner, but there’s also a slight tug of anxiety in there now and I can’t quite place where it’s coming from.
‘Aidan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Will … will Rachel be there tonight?’ I ask him, already wishing I hadn’t opened my mouth as Aidan’s face falls. He freezes, and the weight of stress once more lies heavily on his forehead.
‘Look, Roisin, I can’t lie to you,’ he tells me before he leaves me for the evening. ‘She will be there, yes, and I’ll be in her company for business reasons, but you’ve nothing to worry about, and I mean that.’
I can’t hide my terror at the very idea, and I feel like running away from all of this. It doesn’t sit well with me at all. For just a moment in this hotel room, I got a glimmer of the Aidan I’ve grown so close to, but already he’s gone again as he turns into the money-making, fast-talking corporate person he has been moulded to out here. I can’t relate to this man at all.
He kisses me goodbye and I watch him walk away down the corridor until the elevator door closes and he disappears, waving as he does so. Then I close the door, grab my glass of champagne, and take it to the bathroom where I sit on the edge of the bath and have a good cry out of Ben’s earshot.
All the comfort of love and excitement from our timetogether today feels somehow under threat, and the loneliness that grips me in this big, anonymous city makes me want to pack my bags right now and run straight back home. I imagine Aidan and Rachel seated together at dinner, maybe her hand on his leg, her lipstick on her champagne glass, her perfume in the air.
I imagine there might be music in the background, and maybe they’ll play their favourite song, and I suddenly feel like I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. It doesn’t feel like Aidan’s relationship with Rachel is over, not like it did when it was just the two of us in Ballybray. I feel out of place, uninvited, and a bit silly as I sit here amidst a luxurious lifestyle that could never and will never be me.
I can’t believe I’m thinking this way, but all of a sudden I’ve the most terrible hunch I’ll be glad to leave New York tomorrow. I look around at all this extravagance Aidan has arranged for us and it doesn’t feel like me at all. I’m a fish out of water here.
I love nature and fresh air, I love the beach and the sea and the wind in my face. I love vintage, and second-hand clothes that have a story to tell. I love creating something from nothing and driving around laughing and singing in my pick-up truck with its battered and bruised rusty edges. I love the things that money can’t buy, like laughter and a hug and the feeling of the sun on your face.
I love the Aidan Murphy I got to know back in Ballybray,not this slick, souped-up New York, cardboard cut-out version.
It’s going to be a long, lonely night, and all of a sudden I can’t wait to get home.
28.
‘So, the awards ceremony and big contract pitch is at the Fitzwilliam Hotel on October 28 now, instead of November,’ says Aidan, as we share our final supper in New York early on Sunday evening in a restaurant where the menu caters for Ben’s love of Italian food, and I’m treated to a martini straight from the freezer. ‘It’s a Thursday evening and sounds like it’s going to be pretty intense. I’ll be glad to get it behind me.’
‘October 28th? That would have been Mabel’s eightieth birthday,’ I remind Aidan, who nods as he enjoys his food. I’m doing my best to deny the heaviness in my stomach and the flurry of questions that run through my head as to how the big dinner went the night before, but so far all I’ve had in return are very vague answers as he passes it off as ‘nothing exciting’ and ‘just part of the job’ and ‘another thing ticked off the list’.
Maybe itwasjust ‘part of the job’, but to leave us like that in a hotel in New York after travelling all this way while he dines out with his ex-wife and her father justdoesn’t sit well and leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. And yes I know our visit was unexpected, and yes I know he has a very full-on life to sort out here, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget how lonely I felt last night, long after I’d filled my emptiness with room service and lay awake as each hour ticked by, wondering what he was doing and more importantly, if he was doing it with Rachel.
‘I’m so glad it’s being pulled back to October, and I’m trying not to get too carried away with it being Mabel’s birthday as I think that might be a good omen,’ he tells me, wolfing down his meal. ‘It’s probably the biggest Irish–American contract pitch for ex-pats there is in the city, so it’s a pretty big deal to me to get it for Bruce, and then I’m free from all my commitments to him. We’re nearly there, Roisin. Just another wee while and I’ll be out of their clutches, once and for all.’
Seeing his enthusiasm I can’t help but lighten up a little and I’m already picturing the scene, Aidan in his smart tux, walking up onstage to accept the contract to the nods of approval from his peers in the construction world, as cameras flash in his direction and he accepts it with such gratitude, then escapes to celebrate his freedom at long last.
‘Do you have to make an actual speech if you win?’ asks Ben in between slurping his spaghetti. ‘You should really start practising now if you do. When I won a medal for saying a poem at school, I practised every night for months in front of the mirror, didn’t I, Mum?’
I ruffle Ben’s hair and pat his little shoulder.
