Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming. Cathy Kelly
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herself it didn’t matter that she didn’t have a husband, 2.5 children and a crippling mortgage, but at moments like this, it did matter.
She knew she wasn’t the only woman to fall for a married man, but it felt like it – she was in a club with only one member, a spectacularly stupid member.
Still, when her cell phone rang, she leapt to it, hoping that it might be him, eyes too blurry to focus on the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, girl, how are you doing?’ Carla’s smoky Marlboro Lights voice was warm with concern.
Izzie slumped against the wall beside the phone. ‘OK,’ she mumbled.
‘I’m sorry I told you to go home. I got to thinking that you’d be climbing the walls by now.’
Izzie laughed. ‘How’d you know that?’
‘Instinct.’
‘Whatever it is, it’s spot on,’ Izzie replied. ‘I can see the lure of the barstool now. All those people I used to think were losers for sitting in bars in the afternoon – they have a point.’
‘You could join me on a barstool tonight? First, we eat, then we hit a club or two. Might take your mind off things.’
‘Count me in,’ Izzie said. If she stayed at home, she would cry herself to sleep, she knew.
They arranged to meet in SoHo at eight and when her phone rang moments later, Izzie answered it without looking, thinking it was Carla ringing back.
‘Hi,’ she said warmly.
‘Hello.’
It was him. Colder than he’d ever sounded before, but still him.
The driving rain hitting her face outside the museum benefit came starkly back into her mind. She thought of his arm on his wife, the stunning WASP blonde with racehorse legs, and the blank look on his face as he stared at Izzie.
Then, she remembered her father’s voice on the phone, along with the vision of Gran lying in a coma, and all the vicious things she’d planned to say to Joe vanished. She needed him like she’d never needed him before.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, starting to sob. ‘I’m sorry, Joe. It’s awful, my grandmother back home in Ireland is sick: she’s had a stroke and they don’t know if she’s going to be all right, and it’s awful…’
‘Oh my love,’ he murmured, frost gone. ‘I’ll be right over.’
He was there in ten minutes.
At the door, he said nothing, just held out his arms and let her come to him where he drew her into the tightest bear hug she’d ever experienced.
‘Baby,’ he kept saying over and over again, his hands tenderly stroking her as if she were a child.
Finally safe, she cried until her face was raw and she felt too tired even to stand.
He brought her over to the couch and they sat, Izzie curled up on his lap. The comfort from feeling small and loved was immense.
‘Thank you,’ she sighed, her head bent against the wall of his chest.
Curled up against him, she talked about Gran: about how she’d practically lived in Lily’s house after her mother died, and how Gran had been the only person who didn’t shy away from talking about her mum.
‘Dad didn’t know what to do. He thought that if we talked about Mum, I’d get upset, so it was better if we didn’t. That was fine for the first year when I couldn’t talk about Mum, but afterwards, when I wanted to, he’d change the subject so fast. Maybe he couldn’t talk for his own sake, either.’
‘What was she like?’ he asked.
‘A lot like my dad: vague and artistic. She painted. She’d walk around with paint smudges all over her clothes and on her face and not even notice. She’d go to the supermarket in her slippers and laugh if you mentioned it to her. Bohemian, I guess. She had quite dark skin, not like me, and she loved the sun. She had a mole on her back that went very dark, and she didn’t think anything of it. By the time they realised it was cancerous, she had only weeks to live.’
Joe said nothing, just carried on gently stroking her hair.
‘Dad went to pieces, like today,’ she sighed. ‘Nothing new there. Gran stepped in and took over. She raised me.’
‘Tell me about her,’ he said, moving so that they were both lying on the couch now, his long legs hanging over the end, Izzie feeling fragile against him, the way she always did because he was such a big man.
So she talked: about Gran blazing a trail in Tamarin by leaving to train as a nurse in London during the war, of the stories she’d told of being a twenty-one-year-old in another country, and how she’d coped.
‘That’s probably why I wanted to travel when I left school,’ Izzie said. ‘I’d grown up hearing Gran talk about another world outside Tamarin, and it felt like what I had to do.’
‘But she went back to Ireland, though, didn’t she?’
Izzie nodded. ‘She went back after the war, married my granddad and has been there ever since.’
‘I know you’re going home, but not for good, right? I don’t want you to leave New York,’ he murmured. ‘Your grandmother needs you now, but not to stay. I need you even more, Izzie.’
He moved his hand from stroking her hair to gently trace the curve of her waist and hip, settling around the firm swelling of her buttocks.
Fear and death made people think of love, Gran had told her once. That thought flickered through Izzie’s consciousness as she felt her body answering Joe’s hunger.
People regularly went home from funerals and made love, she knew, to banish the cold, hard reality of death. Gran wouldn’t die, she just couldn’t. As if the fierce passion of their lovemaking could keep her grandmother’s heart beating through some spiritual intervention, Izzie Silver kissed her lover back with more hunger than ever before.
Life and love couldn’t end, it couldn’t.
They ended up in the bed after all, since the couch was too small for both of them. Joe had lifted Izzie up and carried her to the bed, throwing off the pretty pillows that decorated it so they had more room, pinioning her to the bed with his weight as he adored her body, kissing, sucking, licking. The second time was gentler, more loving and less fierce.
When he was inside her, he cradled her face in his hands and gazed into her eyes with such love that Izzie wanted to cry, but he didn’t say anything, only called her name as he came.
After their exertions, Joe lay beside her, breathing deeply. Izzie was sure he was asleep, and she lay curled against him.
As she lay there, she allowed herself to dream. What if he said that this was the time for him to leave his home and come to her?
You need me now, Izzie. I’m going to be there for you. I’m coming to Tamarin too.
And Izzie, who knew she’d never, ever have asked him for that because she wasn’t the sort of woman to walk round with a chisel in her purse, trying to prise him off his wife, would say:
Thank you, I’d hoped you’d say that, but I’d never ask.
If she’d asked, she’d be no better than the sort of woman she hated: the professional girlfriends who picked married men with big bank balances and used skills like safe-crackers to get their hands on the money. That wasn’t Izzie.
But if he came to her now, how wonderful it would be. She’d be able to cope a little better if he were with her, holding her hand, sitting beside her in the hospital with Gran.
‘This is the man I love, Gran,’ she’d whisper, and even, God forbid, if Gran never woke up, Izzie would have brought Joe to meet