Back After the Break Read online

  About the Book

  Ever had your heart blown to smithereens? Ever wondered if happy ever after wasn’t the greatest cliché of them all?

  Lindsay Davidson is not your usual angst-ridden thirty-something. She’s struggled and has finally learned how to fly. Her life is sussed. She's just about to marry Paul Hayes - think Johnny Depp meets Colin Firth - when a phone call rips her life apart. Cue bucketloads of tears and self-doubt, giving Lindsay very little to smile about until she lands her dream job.

  Her new life in television is nothing if not exciting, with as much drama off-screen. Lindsay makes some famous friends and a few enemies in a world where sex and champagne go hand in hand with scandal and rumour. Meanwhile, Paul has realized his mistake and makes a play to get her back. . .

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  About the Author

  Also by Anita Notaro

  Copyright

  Back After the Break

  Anita Notaro

  For Gerry McGuinness.

  I don’t know how I ever got so lucky.

  As this is my first novel, the temptation is to thank everyone I know and bore everyone else to death – so I won’t. But I do need to mention the following:

  Patricia Scanlan is an angel. I met her by accident on Millennium Eve and since then she has encouraged and supported me and this book would not be here without her. Best of all, we’re now friends.

  My family are very special to me – my mother Teresa knows how much I love her. My sisters Madeleine, Lorraine and Jean have provided me with enough material over the years for several books, but I’ve had to promise not to tell!! Then there’s Jill, Marc, Emma, Jack, Jenny, Joshua, Caroline and Andrew.

  I’m lucky enough to have a few very good friends and Dearbhla Walsh, Ursula Courtney, Caroline Henry and Deirdre McCourt have shared my ups and downs. So has Dave Fanning.

  Special thanks to my editor, Francesca Liversidge, for making all my dreams come true. Everyone at Bantam has been professional and very kind, especially Sadie Mayne. Thanks also to Declan Heeney and Gill Hess.

  My agent is Marianne Gunn O’Connor and she’s a spiritual and calm person – just what a writer needs.

  RTE Television has played an important part in my life and I send best wishes to all my friends and colleagues there – especially everyone in Fair City. Be assured that none of you feature in this story.

  Lastly, all love and a million thanks to Gerry – the most talented person I know.

  I hope you enjoy reading the book, it’s very special to me.

  Chapter One

  IT HAD BEEN a night tormented by ghosts and memories and too much alcohol. The awkward positioning of her body revealed the turmoil she’d experienced during the hours that should have brought relief. She lay diagonally across the huge old sleigh bed in the normally tidy Victorian bedroom, in the midst of chaos. Most of the bedclothes were on the floor, even her treasured antique cream eiderdown had surrendered to the trashing and now clung to the bedpost. Her long tanned legs seemed contorted and her normally glossy mane of dark brown hair was dull and twisted from the excesses of the worst night Lindsay Davidson had ever known.

  Sometimes, the mind can play cruel tricks and it didn’t spare the thirty-four-year-old woman who lay enjoying the last blissful moments of unconsciousness. She opened her eyes and for a few delicious seconds life was exactly as it had been for the past two years since she’d met and fallen head over heels in love with Paul. She fought the reality.

  She turned her head, stretching, trying to remember what had happened and in a flash it came flooding back. It was as though a knife had ripped through her insides and she felt a pain so sharp that she almost fainted. She yanked her body into a sitting position. Reality won. The man she’d loved more than she’d ever believed possible had been lying and cheating to her for over a year. Outside a car horn tooted and a dog yapped in the distance as the city sprung into life.

  This isn’t happening to me, she thought desperately. Oh please God, no, I’m getting married in two months’ time.

  Wrong, a quiet, menacing voice whispered, he’s going to marry someone else.

  Lindsay tried to scream but the sound evaporated before it brought any relief. She was reminded of the day her father died. She’d been uncontrollable when they’d told her, a doctor had to be called to sedate her and when she’d woken after fourteen hours the pain had been excruciating as the realization flooded in.

  This was much worse, she thought wildly because Paul was alive and well and in love with someone else and this was Dublin and everyone would know.

  She knew she had to get to the bathroom fast. As she struggled into her towelling robe the telephone rang and she changed course automatically, dashing towards the hall as the answering machine clicked into action.

  Please God, let it be him. Maybe it was a joke, perhaps he was drunk, or insane. Please I’ll do anything, just don’t let it be true. She waited, convinced and therefore calmer, for the gorgeous liquidy voice that always reminded her of a big fat glass of Baileys and ice to give the usual ‘Hi Darling, it’s me’.

  Instead a sharp, impatient female voice, clearly exasperated, delivered an ultimatum. ‘This is a message for Lindsay Davidson. It’s Hilda Cullen from Personnel in Channel 6 here and we have not received confirmation that you’ll be attending for interview at eleven-thirty today as per our letter of the sixteenth. Please call me immediately . . .’

  Here was the chance she’d been waiting for, the first step towards the job of her dreams. And it had to come today. She oozed onto the floor in the corner of the sunshine-yellow hall and cried at the unfairness of it all.

  Two hours and two litres of water later Lindsay knew she looked half decent, although she felt like one of those strange robotic characters her young nephews played with. Buzz Lightyear, that was one of them. She had to bite her lip as she drove the short distance to Channel 6, remembering the time she’d gone to New York to do her Christmas shopping with Paul and they’d spent hours looking for tha
t particular toy for four-year-old Jake, who could talk of nothing else. Her sister Anne was in a complete panic because there wasn’t one to be found anywhere in Dublin and she’d phoned Lindsay, begging her to find one. How they’d laughed because they hadn’t a clue what they were looking for and felt ridiculous asking in every shop for Buzz Lightyear in a fake New York accent and then falling about laughing, high on life and love and champagne. ‘To infinity and beyond’ – that famous catchphrase summed up exactly how she felt today.

  She checked herself in the car mirror one last time, thinking that if she could pull this off then nothing was impossible. Her skin looked like well-used putty. No amount of her favourite Clinique Moisture Surge could erase the havoc the night had played on her complexion, although she’d carefully applied concealer and foundation followed by bronzing powder and blusher and anything else she could find in her make-up bag. Her blue-grey eyes looked listless and her long thick lashes merely emphasized the dark shadows. At least the rich-chocolate lipstick added some colour, she conceded, although she hadn’t time to notice that it only highlighted the deathly pallor of her complexion.

  She was unaware of the striking picture she made as she walked from the car, a tall, voluptuous girl in a long black pencil skirt and fitted wool jacket, blood-red camisole peeping out. Her dark hair was pulled severely back off her face because she couldn’t do anything else with it, having stood under an ice-cold shower for twenty minutes to try to get some feeling back into her heavy, sweaty, numb body. She looked confident and gorgeous yet somehow sad and forlorn, thought Chris Keating, one of the station’s newest stars, as he drove past the security barrier and caught sight of her purposeful stride in his wing mirror, before abandoning the car and all thought of the intriguing girl in a desperate effort to get to the studio to record a piece for his lunchtime programme.

  Lindsay was hesitant as she stepped into the Television Centre, gave her name and sat down to wait. She knew for the first time exactly how Alice must have felt in Wonderland. The scene was utterly enchanting to an outsider as the outrageous world of show business spread itself at her feet, almost smothering her with its intoxicating mix of colour and vitality and unreality and sheer unadulterated glamour.

  She saw that gorgeous radio presenter with the big dark eyes looking even cuter than in his photos, watched in awe as top newscaster Maria Devlin strode past reading some lines aloud, oblivious to everyone around her. She smiled and said hello to the actress from a well-known soap, then blushed furiously because of course she only knew her from TV, sat captivated by the small tubby man and tall skinny woman in the middle of a heated argument about a script for the main news bulletin and tried to stifle a giggle at the child who was kicking her mother because she couldn’t meet two of the station’s most famous puppets. The long-suffering woman tried to explain to the receptionist that they had travelled from the west of Ireland and it was the child’s sixth birthday. And the child obviously gets what she wants every time, Lindsay thought. She marvelled at the patience of the girl behind the desk who cheerfully explained to the screaming brat that the stars always had a nap before their afternoon show.

  The interview itself was a nightmare. Three men and two women grilled her for over an hour, jumping from English to Irish – she’d forgotten that the native language was a requirement for anyone working on one of the main TV channels in Ireland. The questions came hard and fast like little silver rockets in a pinball machine, switching with lightning speed from politics to religion, from sport to music. They even produced prints from famous Irish artists, asking her to identify the period and the painter.

  Jesus, she thought wildly, don’t they realize I can barely focus on the damn things, let alone name the artist. She couldn’t for a second imagine why an assistant producer, which was the job she’d applied for, would need to know these things. She later learned that they were testing her general knowledge in order to assess her flexibility for a wide range of programming.

  They quizzed her at length about her career in interior design and why she wanted to change direction at this stage, but Lindsay was prepared for this one. She explained that she felt she had reached her full potential, working for a large company, and had decided against setting up her own business.

  ‘Why? Are you afraid of the stress and hard work involved?’ One of the men was in like a shot.

  ‘Not at all, I thrive on hard work. But I work better as part of a team and that’s one of the reasons this job interests me. Also, I feel now is the right time for me to change direction and my skills should prove beneficial here, especially in areas such as design and lighting.’

  ‘Would you say you’re a creative person?’

  ‘Wouldn’t a move to TV mean a serious pay cut?’

  ‘Are you worried about working late nights and weekends?’

  It went on and on, while her heart beat faster, her mouth got drier and her tongue felt furry.

  Finally, just when she hoped they might be finished because her spine felt about as flexible as a telephone pole, the tired thin woman with the shrivelled lips looked at her and asked, ‘Who is your favourite poet?’

  ‘Yeats,’ she replied automatically, her brain tuning in, without prompting on her part, to the poet she had loved for years, ever since her father had read some lines to her as a small child.

  ‘Perhaps you would recite some of your favourite lines,’ thin lips asked, faking a smile, hoping to catch her out.

  Lindsay’s brain, to her amazement, functioned automatically, which she knew sometimes happens in moments of complete panic. Although she could usually recite any one of twenty poems, today only one title came to mind – ‘Never Give all the Heart’.

  Pity she hadn’t taken that advice herself. Her voice sounded thin and slightly hysterical as she struggled to get the words out without crying. As soon as she’d finished, she wondered whether she would even make it to the door before her legs buckled. Please God, she implored, let this be over soon.

  As if sensing something, the guy with the kind eyes from Personnel looked at the others quickly. ‘I think that’s about it.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m sure you’re exhausted. We’ll be in touch in about a week. I should tell you that we’ve had several hundred applications. Unfortunately, we only have eight positions to offer to successful candidates and those jobs would be subject to the completion of a three-month training course.’

  Nothing registered but she stood automatically and somehow made it to the door with a smile plastered to her face, then bolted to her car where she was unrecognizable as the confident, gorgeous woman Chris Keating had been admiring less than two hours earlier.

  Chapter Two

  TWO MUFFLED, HESITANT, broken phone calls. Two confused, angry, incredulous friends who immediately enveloped her in a cocoon of candyfloss. They talked endlessly, drank wine and anything else they could find in the house, plotted and argued and tried to reason, but mostly they listened.

  She ranted and raved, her eyes like shiny black coals, felt momentarily elated, then deeply depressed. They laughed and cried, humoured and cajoled and considered what she should do, but more important than anything else, they sympathized as only girl friends can.

  ‘He’s a bastard.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How could he do this to me?’

  ‘I don’t know, you don’t deserve it.’

  ‘I love him so much.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be OK.’

  ‘I can’t live without him.’

  ‘Yes, you can, we’ll help.’

  ‘I never want to see him again.’

  ‘Just wait, he’ll be back.’

  On and on it went, over and over, round and round like a particularly lurid ride at a funfair and yet she wanted to talk some more. It seemed that talking about him made him still part of her life, which he clearly no longer was. They never yawned once and neither Debbie’s soft velvety brown eyes nor Tara’s sparkly blue ones ever glazed over, even as sh
e discussed for the millionth time whether she should ring him.

  ‘That’s it, I have to talk to him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I know, I’ll e-mail him.’

  ‘OK, let’s work out what to say.’

  ‘No, I’ll leave a message on his mobile.’

  ‘Right, we’ll have a rehearsal.’

  They were fiercely protective of her and yet each of them would have handled the situation differently, given any encouragement.

  Debbie, straight as a poker, soft as a marshmallow, long, gangly, wild, beautiful, wanted to go straight to him and bust his lip, while Tara with her big sexy mouth, mass of blond hair and tiny doll-like body would have had her revenge in an entirely different way. They were quite a combination, these three strong, fragile women. Between them they’d had enough experience of men to fill the entire ‘self-help’ section of Waterstone’s and now they called it all into play.

  ‘Ring him and tell him exactly what you think of him and then tell him that it’s his loss and hang up.’

  ‘Let’s find out where he’s going to be on Saturday night and then you can turn up with a gorgeous hunk.’ It never occurred to any of them that they barely knew a gorgeous hunk between them.

  ‘What about getting a male voice on your answering machine so that when he does ring he’ll go mad?’ Was it not obvious at this stage that he wasn’t going to ring?

  ‘I know, Tara and I’ll go round to his house and let the air out of his tyres in the middle of the night, just so we all feel a bit better’ – completely ignoring the fact that he was in England!

  They stayed with her all hours, day and night, and when they did go home to shower and change she rang and bawled. They appeared again with muffins and chocolates and more alcohol and sat down as if they’d never heard her latest plan to win him back. Charlie, her beloved golden retriever, yawned as soon as he saw them as he knew his chances of a run on the beach were non-existent. He settled on the rug in front of the Aga, shifting himself only to push up against Lindsay now and then and lick every bit of whatever bare skin happened to be exposed. He had no idea what was wrong but he sure knew the salty taste of a wet face and he methodically licked it dry every time. Lindsay loved him to bits and Debbie liked to think that Charlie was stretched out hatching a plan to take a big juicy chunk out of whatever asshole had caused his beloved owner to turn into a slithery mass of particularly runny jelly.