Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?. Claudia Carroll
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Название: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
Автор: Claudia Carroll
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007338566
isbn:
I think he must have guessed this wasn’t a subject I particularly wanted to be probed on, so he tactfully changed the subject back to Mum.
‘Still though, South America’s a helluva long way for you to travel to see your mother,’ he said, worry suddenly flashing into the coal-black eyes. ‘And then keeping in contact can’t be easy either. All those long-distance phone calls, emailing the whole time…’
‘Oh no, it’s absolutely fine, I’m well used to it.’
I might have sounded all sure of myself and blasé, but his quick mind seemed to read me accurately and he easily sensed the insecurity that lay beneath.
‘Do you have any other family here in Ireland?’ he asked kindly.
‘My grandmother…but honestly, I’m completely fine about Mum being so far away. As Yolanda pointed out to me, I’ve got to look on the positive side.’
‘Which is?’
‘She said I’m probably the only one in this school who can go home for the holidays and pick up a suntan at the same time.’
He smiled his gorgeous crooked smile at that, then changed the subject, saying that there was a big rugby match that Saturday in the school grounds against Clongowes Wood, a rival boarding school, and did I fancy coming along to watch?
‘I’m playing in it,’ he grinned and in that second I was utterly sucked into his easy, relaxed charm. ‘And believe me, if last night’s training session is anything to go by, we need all the support we can get.’
Course at lunchtime, Yolanda cornered me and didn’t so much ask as demand to know the exact nature and substance of what we’d been talking about. So I told her, correctly guessing that she wouldn’t like it.
‘He invited you to watch the match?’ she hissed, her blue eyes a beautiful study in wounded pride. Bless her, she’d been kind and welcoming to me; really bad idea to go pissing her off now. And given that I had a social circle that consisted of one girlfriend, the last thing I needed was to start making enemies.
‘Come on, Yolanda, he meant as friends, that’s all,’ I stressed. ‘He was asking me about my mother being so far away and just felt a bit sorry for me, that’s all. For God’s sake, it’s only a rugby match. Won’t half the school be there supporting the team?’
This mollified her a bit and by the time I reminded her that Dan was only being nice to the new girl, she’d finally started to cool down a bit. But not before impressing on me that Mike Sherry had expressed interest in me, that he was a sweetheart and that I’d be a right moron not to really, really, really consider giving him a whirl.
‘You know you really should give Mike a chance,’ Yolanda had said for about the thousandth time one evening during study time, as she stared out the window and through the lashing rain at Dan training hard on the rugby pitch, rolling around with the rest of the team and covered in shite. Incidentally, him at his happiest, I’d later discover.
‘You could do a lot worse than Mike, you know. Oooh, and just think; over the Christmas holidays, you and he and me and Dan could all meet up and go out together as a foursome! Wouldn’t that be, like, the coolest thing ever?’
Like I said, everyone knew that Yolanda and Dan were a couple just waiting to happen.
At Allenwood, it was accepted fact.
Chapter Four
Christmas Eve and still no word about the play. And Dan’s lukewarm reaction to the whole thing? ‘Look, you don’t actually have the job yet, so why don’t we just cross that bridge when we come to it?’ Cue him collapsing with deep exhaustion into bed for the next seven hours and that to date has been pretty much his one and only comment on the subject.
But deep down I know he’s right, of course. As of now I don’t have the job, so nothing for me to do but try and put it right out of my head. Which of course is like trying not to breathe. A few days after my first audition, Fag Ash Hil rang saying they wanted to see me for a call-back. Good sign. So up I traipsed to the National in Dublin: same drill all over again, with Jack Gordon sitting there cool as a fish’s fart and apologising for hauling me all the way from Waterford for a second time, then telling me, actually saying it to my face, that he still wasn’t any closer to making a final casting decision yet. That he needed to mull it over for a while longer and ‘give full thought to the chemistries between each of the characters’. So I was put through my paces all over again and now there was nothing to do but wait it out.
That aside, I’ve got two secret Christmas wishes in my heart: one is that I’d have news about the job…whether good or bad…by Christmas. Because nothing on this earth is worse than the not bloody knowing. Not to be though.
Lizzie rang me yesterday, hung-over as a dog after the National’s Christmas party the previous night, to celebrate the show coming to an end, ‘prior to Broadway transfer’.
Funny, but just hearing her stories about the mad piss-up they had, then how they’d all staggered into Lillie’s Bordello and stayed there till five in the morning, made me stop in my tracks. Like I’d suddenly just got a flash of the parallel life I might have had, if I’d never married. Because you know, that might have been me…out on the tiles…celebrating a blossoming career…off to play Broadway for an entire year…
God, it might yet be me, I suddenly thought, if I get good news, that is. For a split second, I allow myself to get sucked into the fantasy, the excitement of not knowing what other wonderful work opportunities might come from playing Broadway…which American agents might come to see the show and maybe even take me on…then put me up for other big jobs…I mean, who could tell? Maybe even the ultimate dream might miraculously come about…that I’d somehow get a crack at a few movie castings too?
Then a stab of reality so sharp it almost winds me; that’s Lizzie’s future I’m describing, not mine. For the coming year, the world is her oyster and if I’m being honest with myself, I envy her from the very depths of my bone marrow. And right now, she’s out partying and having hangovers then staying in bed till the crack of lunch, like you’re supposed to when you’re twenty-eight and when you’ve absolutely no one else to answer to but yourself.
And here’s me, stuck in my mother-in-law’s house, listening to all her passive-aggressive little digs for not clearing out ash from the grate properly AND for using cranberry sauce out of a jar and not making it from scratch, like all Ferguson women have done for the last two millennia.
But then I’ve no choice in the matter. Because I’m married, aren’t I? With my husband of course, nowhere to be seen. Leaving me yet again feeling like I’m trapped in a cage of my own making, watching everyone else have fun in the outside world, through reinforced steel bars.
Lizzie, bless her, made the right noises on the phone, saying all the things you need to hear when waiting to find out about a job that could potentially change your entire life. That no news was good news for starters. Oh, and that Jack had taken himself off to London for a few days to accept some award, so chances were I wouldn’t hear anything till New Year and I’d just have to put it out of my head till then.
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