Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Wait!’ I’m dazed. My stomach hurts watching Donal stride up the staircase. What have I done? Why do I feel so sick? He’s gone!
‘Mia’s asking for you up on the stage! Come on!’ Logan informs me, still pulling me through the crowd by the hand. People start to clap.
‘W-what? I have to go after him,’ I mumble, barely looking at Logan as I try to wriggle free from his grip.
‘Don’t be silly! This is Mia’s night!’ Logan pulls me along through the clapping crowd as people slap me on the back.
He’s right. It is Mia’s night! I try to focus on the reason I’m here.
Mia looks incredible in her dress suit, with her blonde hair gelled back.
‘Ah, here she is! Every woman needs a best friend, someone they can rely on, someone that has their back. Get up here, you.’ Mia curls her index finger at me and Logan boosts me up onto the stage.
I need to be present now, I give myself an inner pep talk.
‘It’s never easy to give marriage advice, and she never did.
But she quietly observed, she noticed the change in me, and without her asking me if I was happy I might still be pretending that I’m fine.
By that I mean lying to myself and everyone else that I was happy and not just resigned to a life of what might be.
The height of my excitement was debating on whether to use the good forks on pizza night! ’ Mia raises the mic.
The crowd laughs and Mia puts her arm around my shoulder.
‘Grace, you didn’t know it at the time, but it was you who gave me the courage to ask for a divorce.
You picked yourself up after hard times and never looked back.
You reminded me that I could be a successful, independent woman with ambition.
That marriage and babies don’t define us.
I love you. Now everyone raise your glass to Grace! ’
‘To Grace.’ The room calls my name and I felt like the biggest phoney. Suddenly, my head starts to pound. Mia is swept away in a crowd of work colleagues, all taking selfies with her. I need air.
I turn to the staircase, take the steps two at a time, even in my wedges.
Outside on Leeson Street, I see the taxi rank is ten deep with free cabs, their lights shining, happily inhabiting the quiet hour before the madness ensues after hours.
I need to go home. It’s not like Mia will miss me now.
As I open the door to the first cab in the line and sit in, someone gets in beside me.
‘Drop me on the way?’ Logan settles himself into the back seat, sidling up beside me. I shudder, but I give the driver my address, followed by Mia’s address in Dalkey where Logan is staying. He inputs it into his satnav, indicates and pulls out, and that’s when I see him.
Donal.
A brown paper bag of chips in his hands, standing at the lights waiting to cross the road. He’s looking right into the cab at myself and Logan. He holds a chip aloft in front of his mouth. The shape of his mouth is that of shock, it just hangs open. He meets my eye.
My mouth opens and closes before I can form the words. ‘It’s not . . .’ I mouth, shaking my head.
I stare at him, and our eyes stay connected before he shakes his head gently and the lights go green.
I try to roll down the window, but it’s locked, and I watch as Donal crosses the road.
I need to call out to him. I need to explain why Logan and I are in a taxi just minutes after he left. I know what this must look like.
‘No! Shit!’ I yell. ‘Open my window!’
‘All right back there?’ the taxi driver asks, his eyes wide and focused on me in his rear-view mirror.
I clutch at the softness of the headrest. ‘Can you roll down my window?’ I put my hands on the glass.
But the car has already sped past Donal.
‘Never mind.’ I slide my hands down and the noise is a long squeak. I slump back. This can’t be happening.
The driver speeds through the quiet Dublin streets. We hit all green lights along the route as we approach Old Camden Street and the flat.
‘Can I come up to our flat with you?’ Logan says. ‘Just to talk?’
I don’t answer him.
‘I know this isn’t the right time . . . but I needed to ask you if I could maybe do my self-tape up there tomorrow for the RTé crime drama? Charlie keeps barking when I try to record it at Mia’s. It’s impossible.’ Logan’s caught up in his Logan bubble, as always.
I still don’t answer him. I sit back and pull my phone out of my silver bag. Donal thinks I left with Logan so quickly after he left the party. What must he think of me? He has every right to think I’m a total bitch. I start to type out a text to him.
I’m so sorry about tonight . . .
But I stare at it and press the delete button, watch the letters disappear off my screen, one by one, like leaves carried away on a soft breeze. No one wants an I’m so sorry text. Of all people, I know that only too well. Donal deserves better than that.
Donal deserves better than me.
I blew it.
But with my phone still in my hand, I open the message I’ve read hundreds, no, thousands of times.
The pinned one. Logan’s text to me in Portofino.
Gracie, I won’t be at the church. I can’t marry you today and I’m so sorry.
I’m going to New York, don’t hate me. With that kiss and the one-tear crying emoji at the end.
‘Here we are.’ Then taxi driver pulls up outside MacMan’s Arcade.
‘Can I, Gracie? Pop up?’
‘No, Logan, we can’t talk anymore. I’m so sorry, but I can never get back with you, don’t hate me.’ I blow him a kiss as I get out of the taxi and slam the door behind me.
And that is that.
Closure.