Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming. Cathy Kelly
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‘It was all so complicated. He loves his kids and he wants to make it all right for them, Carla. He’s not a bastard, honestly. He’s the real deal and I knew he needed time,’ she said lamely.
‘Time? Yeah, time to play an away game until he rolled back to his wife.’
Izzie burst into tears, a move which startled both of them.
‘Jeez,’ said Carla.
‘It’s over anyway,’ Izzie said, weeping. ‘I believed him about needing time and then I found out he was going to a party with his wife, and it didn’t seem like such separate lives any more, so I finished with him.’
‘That’s something,’ Carla remarked.
‘No, it’s not,’ sobbed Izzie. ‘Because I’ve never felt worse in my whole life. I still believe him, but it’s too much, too complicated. I can’t be involved in that and I had to get out before…’
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Before she fell so painfully in love with him that she’d stay no matter what, was what she wanted to say. Except she’d already done that, it seemed. She didn’t care what was going on in Joe’s life, she just wanted to be part of it. Her moral compass was broken and she didn’t care.
‘Izzie!’ a voice rang out from inside. ‘Urgent call for you from Ireland. Some emergency…’
Izzie gratefully took the cup of coffee that Carla offered her and wrapped her hands around it. Their cube farm in the Perfect-NY offices wasn’t cold, but she was icy inside at the news. Darling Gran, one constant in an always messed-up world, was in hospital back home in Tamarin and she might die.
The news had shocked all thought of Joe out of her mind.
Instead, she thought of Lily, frail now more than slender, with those faded blue eyes staring out wisely at the world. Kindness shone out of her: kindness and wisdom.
Izzie couldn’t bear to think that her grandmother’s wisdom would be gone for ever when she needed it so much.
There were so many things she still needed to know, so many things she wanted to tell Gran – now, she might never be able to.
And the one thing she desperately wanted to share, how she felt about Joe, she’d never be able to tell. To a woman of her grandmother’s generation, there could be nothing worse than infidelity, and Izzie simply couldn’t bear to see Gran’s eyes cloud over with the knowledge that Izzie was having an affair with a man who was still married. If Carla, who was as liberal as it was possible to be without being a radical lesbian feminist, had been shocked by the news, imagine how devastated Gran would be. Granted, Carla’s anger was only because she felt Izzie had been conned, but still.
‘Oh, Gran,’ Izzie prayed, willing magic into the air as if that might breathe health into her grandmother thousands of miles away, ‘please, please don’t go.’
‘It was a massive stroke,’ Dad had said on the phone. ‘They found her in the courtyard outside the church. Luckily she’d fallen against the back of the seat or else she’d have cracked her head on the slabs and then, well…’ His voice had trailed off.
Her father couldn’t say ‘she would certainly have died’. Not dealing with the hard stuff was Brendan’s forte. Izzie knew it was not by accident that she’d fallen for an alpha male with vigour, courage and the ability to face life.
The noticeable differences between the man she loved and her father was the stuff undoubtedly covered on the first day of the Psychology Made Simple class.
‘When did it happen?’
‘This morning after Mass.’
‘What do the doctors say?’ Izzie steeled herself.
‘Not much…she’s in intensive care and they’ve got all these tests to do, but nobody will really say anything to me…’
Izzie could imagine her father, taller than she was, but without a shred of her fierce energy, looking round the ICU for a doctor, but not able to find anyone to ask because they were all rushing and he didn’t like to bother anyone.
Sweet and gentle was a lovely way to live, but it didn’t work in the high-speed, intensely pressured atmosphere of an emergency room.
‘Is anyone with you? Like Anneliese or Edward?’
Uncle Edward was a more forceful individual than her father and would certainly get things done. Darling Anneliese was even better: she was calm in any crisis and she’d certainly needed to be, Izzie knew.
Her cousin, Beth, would have gone under if her mother hadn’t been made of such stern stuff.
‘No.’ Her father made the word into two syllables.
Izzie waited.
‘Anneliese is on her way. I phoned Edward, you see, and told him and said to tell Anneliese, and he went all quiet and said since it was an emergency he would, which sounds strange, but I didn’t have time to ask him…’
‘But Anneliese is on her way?’ Izzie was impatient with these details. She needed to know that her aunt would be there, looking after things, looking after Lily.
‘Well, yes. I suppose. You know how Anneliese loves your gran.’
‘I should be there,’ Izzie said.
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to come home. You’re so busy with work,’ her father said quickly, which made Izzie feel bleak at this perceived notion that her job, only a bloody job, was more important than her beloved grandmother. Had she made them all think that? That Perfect-NY was higher on her list of priorities than her family?
‘I’m coming,’ she said fiercely. Damn the bloody job. If she had to swim across the bloody Atlantic to reach her grandmother’s hospital bedside, she’d do it. ‘Gran needs me.’
What she didn’t say was: And I need her because my heart is broken.
‘Go home,’ advised Carla. ‘You look wrecked. Lie on the couch and chill, and call me if you need me, right?’
Izzie nodded. ‘I will, thanks – for everything.’ Thanks for not mentioning Joe again, she meant.
She got a cab home instead of battling it out on the subway, and all the way home she wondered if God was so vengeful that her grandmother’s stroke was His way of getting at her for being involved with Joe.
No, don’t be crazy, she told herself. That’s like saying only you are important, so that God punishes other people to get at you. But still the thought hammered away in her head with the intensity of a horror movie watched late at night. She’d always jokingly described herself as a submarine Catholic – one who only comes up when there’s trouble. Now she realised it was true, and then some. Trouble made her Catholicism seep out of her pores and make her question everything.
At home, she checked the airlines and found that she’d never make that evening’s flight to Dublin, but that there were seats on the next evening’s.
She booked, feeling a strange sense of relief that she couldn’t leave New York just yet. She felt too unravelled to go, so much of her life still hung out there, threads flying in the wind.
She began to pack for the trip and found that she couldn’t concentrate. What would the weather be like was normally an important packing question, but the major one – how long would she be gone – was unanswerable. It depended on her grandmother’s survival.
Oh, Gran.
The silence of the apartment was closing in on her. Izzie was rarely at home on a weekday afternoon; she was always out there, being New York City Girl, rushing and racing. For what? she thought bitterly. To be alone, dealing with this horrible news, preparing to make a journey home alone too.
Where was