One by one, I stab in the numbers, then wait with my heart walloping. No joy. I’m just about to break into a sweat when next thing, disaster. The alarm goes off in all its ear-piercing, glass-window-shattering glory. It’s beyond deafening, so much so that I have to stick my two fingers in my ears and mime to Sharon and Maggie to get back outside. The three of us run out to the front garden hands clapped over our ears and mouths agape like three exact replicas of that Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.
‘WHAT THE FECK DID YOU DO?’ I think Sharon’s screaming at me, but over the alarm racket I just have to lip read her.
‘HE MUST HAVE CHANGED THE ALARM CODE!’ I mime back, whipping out my mobile phone to ring him. He doesn’t answer and it’s ridiculous me leaving a message for him because I can’t even hear myself over the unmerciful racket.
Then more panic sets in. His alarm is monitored, so right now, the alarm company are probably ringing both him and the police to let them know that it’s gone off. In the panic and the pandemonium, we’re all screaming at each other, so completely deafened that I think we’ll end up having hearing difficulties for life…and that’s exactly when a neat little squad car comes trundling up the driveway, blue lights flashing.
In all the sleepless nights I’ve had since moving back home, and believe me there have been many, I’d sometimes lie awake, staring at Joan’s stupid-looking eight-arm chandelier in the TV room, fantasising wildly about possible reconciliation scenarios between me and Sam. Him arriving in his flashy Bentley to Whitehall, walloping on the front door and shoving his way past Maggie and Sharon, sweeping me up into his arms and back to my old life…always a particular favourite. Him have a screeching go at Maggie for being such a minging cow to me this last while, resulting in Joan’s revolting plates being hurled around the room by the two of them like flowery peach-ringed missiles, also made it into my top five. But never, in my greatest, wildest flights of imagination did I imagine this. That I’d be sitting in Kildare Police Station, with Sharon and Maggie on either side of me, facing some highly embarrassing questioning from one Superintendent McHugh. Who’s a perfectly nice man, kindly in a patrician, fatherly sort of way, but clearly has me written off as some kind of lunatic/stalker/amateur burglar who’s crying out to be admitted to the nearest day care unit.
‘And these are your two sisters, you say, Miss Woods?’
‘ Stepsisters,’ Maggie snaps back. ‘Which means we’re not actually related at all really. Just in case you were thinking that insanity runs in families.’
‘What’s of concern to us, Miss Woods, is why a valid key holder wouldn’t be aware of a change in the alarm code.’
‘But as I’ve explained to you time and again,’ I insist firmly, ready to leap up and start thumping on the table like they do in all those miscarriage of justice movies, ‘the owner of the house, Sam Hughes, has been out of the country for a while and…you see, the thing is that he must have changed the code before he left.’
‘Without mentioning it to the key holder? Seems a bit odd, wouldn’t you think?’
‘I promise you, Superintendent; this is all just a silly misunderstanding…’
‘Jessie just broke up with Sam, you see,’ Sharon chips in and I’m sure she means to be helpful but I actually could strangle her.
‘Oh, so then you were in a relationship with the home owner?’
‘Emm…yes.’
‘And you didn’t think to mention this before? Now why was that?’
‘Because…I just didn’t. I mean…that is to say, I didn’t think it was relevant.’
‘So what was your reason for calling to his home when he wasn’t there?’
‘Well…’ Think, think, think!‘I didn’t know that he wouldn’t be there you see.’
‘Ah for feck’s sake, just come clean, Jessie, will you?’ says Sharon, prodding me under the table. ‘Then we can all get out of here. You see, Superintendent, basically she was trying to get back with him. That was the plan. I know, I thought it was a mental idea all along too.’
‘Can I just point out that I’ve never, ever done anything like this before?’ I plead.
‘Well your first time was a roaring success,’ says Maggie from out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Look, why don’t you just plead insanity and then we can all get out of here? And by the way, Guard, can I step outside for a cigarette now? I’d nothing to do with any of this and I haven’t even had dinner yet.’
Then another Guard comes in, a woman this time about Joan’s vintage, who briskly plonks a polystyrene cup full of milky tea in front of the Superintendent and is about to turn on her heel to leave when…disaster…she recognises me.
‘Excuse me, it’s Jessie Woods, isn’t it?’
I nod and manage a watery half smile, thinking Shit, shit, shit.
Last thing I need is this leaking to the papers.
‘I thought it was you. Almost didn’t know you with the red hair. Sorry about what happened to your show and everything.’
‘Ehh…thanks.’
‘Don’t suppose I could get an autograph, could I?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘It’s not for me, of course. I never watch lowest common denominator television. It’s for my daughter.’
‘Oh. Right then.’
‘And just to let you know, Superintendent, Mr Sam Hughes has just arrived and is ready to identify Miss Woods now.’
No, no, no, no, please for the love of God, noooooo.I do NOT believe this.
But before I have time to gather my thoughts, Sam is being ushered into the tiny questioning room, all good humour and bonhomie and radiating his usual bullet-proof self-confidence. He doesn’t make eye contact with me, just instantly identifies the Superintendent as the main man in all of this, and torpedoes straight in on maximum, high-alert charm offensive. It’s Sam at his most gulp-inducingly handsome, dazzling best. A terrible misunderstanding, he beams winningly, flashing a smile that practically pings. Perfectly easy to explain away though. Quite simply, Miss Woods wanted to collect some of her belongings from the house and hadn’t realised that the alarm code had been changed. So awful to have involved the police in all this…such a storm in a tea cup and profuse apologies all round.
‘Ah, sure, not at all,’ says Superintendent McHugh good-humouredly, already like putty in Sam’s hands. ‘We just can’t be too careful now can we? And of course when we found Miss Woods at the property with no positive identification on her, we’d no choice but to bring her in for questioning. Standard procedure, we’d do the same for anyone, ha, ha, HA.’
During all of this, I’m completely agog, having forgotten the sheer force of nature that Sam can be. And now that we’re sharing the same airspace again, I’m also silently willing the oxygen to stop my body from shaking. It’s tough though, because as he’s chatting away, a whole kaleidoscope of memories keep flooding back to me, including one particular gem; the first time Sam ever said he loved me.
We were on a mini-break in Venice, I remember. He was there on business and I flew out to join him for the weekend. We had two blissfully romantic days of pure luxury in the Cipriani Hotel…well, that is to say, it was blissfully romantic in between all of his business meetings. But then, I knew he was going to be busy, Sam’s always busy. Anyway, on our last night, at my insistence, we went on a gondola ride through the city. I had it all planned, I’d even smuggled along two snipes of pink champagne for us to sip while gliding under moonlit bridges through the twisting canals. I’ll never forget it, maybe I was a bit tipsy, but I snuggled up into him and whispered that I loved him so much, that he was the single best thing that had ever happened to me. Then, in the half-second delay before he answered, his iPhone rang and he answered it, telling me it was important and that he had to take it.