Love Me Or Leave Me. Claudia Carroll

can’t do this,’ her mother sobbed, not even bothering to dab away the tears now that had completely destroyed all her carefully applied make-up. ‘I can’t sit back and watch you make the biggest mistake of your life. I can’t and I won’t.’

      ‘But it’s not a mistake, Mum. I love Kirk, you know that. And this is forever.’

      ‘Forever! What does a twenty-two-year-old understand about the word forever? You haven’t the first clue what you’re even talking about!’

      ‘Don’t do this, Mum. I’m so, so happy and I want you to be too.’

      But Dawn was wasting her time and she knew it. Still and all though, she thought, as the night began to wind down, she’d somehow still managed to have a magical day, in spite of her side’s best efforts to sabotage it all.

      And then, finally, finally, finally, come about 2 a.m., she and Kirk were at last left alone in the Mongolian yurt they’d been given especially for the night.

      Dawn was perched at the edge of the bed, shaking loose her plum-tinted, scraggly hair and unhooking the back of her plain white dress, when suddenly Kirk was over beside her, arms locked tight around her waist, jet black mop of his long, silky hair buried deep into her neck.

      ‘Thank you, my love,’ he murmured.

      ‘For what?’

      ‘For doing this. For committing to me today. For loving me the way I love you.’

      ‘Always,’ she’d whispered back, slipping out of her dress, kicking it aside and abandoning it on the floor. What the feck. It only cost fifteen euro in Penny’s anyway.

      ‘Just remember,’ she told him lovingly, ‘this is for always.’

      ‘For always.’

      What a lovely, lovely word, Dawn thought, as Kirk’s hands slowly and expertly slid down her naked back.

      Always.

      *

      ‘This the address you want then, love?’ the taxi driver said, interrupting her reverie.

      Dawn snapped to and realized that they’d already arrived at Eva’s apartment building, right beside Grand Canal Square.

      She found cash to pay him, even found the manners to thank him and managed to make it all the way up to Eva’s apartment before collapsing into tears so violent, she even frightened herself.

       Chapter Five

       Jo.

       From: [email protected]

       To: [email protected]

       Re: The last of your things.

       April 17th, 8.05 a.m.

       Dave,

       Strongly feel for both our sakes that it’s best if we don’t communicate face-to-face right now, but restrict it to emails instead. Besides, I’m just too angry to even look at you right now and would find it a strain not to start flinging ornaments around the place were we to, ‘attempt to solve this,’ as you so naïvely suggest. Sort what exactly, Dave? There is absolutely nothing left for us to talk about.

       I assume you’re staying at your mother’s, as I know how fond you are of all your home comforts such as Sky Sports and getting your laundry done, not to mention having home cooked dinners served up to you every night.

       However, if you haven’t cleared out the last of your stuff from my flat by the time I get back from London, then please understand; I’m hiring a skip and you can fish your entire vinyl collection, your collection of David Mamet plays (none of which you ever actually appeared in), your raggy, knackery underpants and those vile leather jackets that make you look like a pimp, from the bottom of said skip.

       Please Dave, this is the probably the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.

       Jo.

       From: [email protected]

       To: [email protected]

       Re: The last of your things.

       April 17th, 8.44 a.m.

      Dearest wife of mine,

      A delight, as always, to be on the receiving end of one of your early morning emails. My, my, what a wondrous mood we’re in today!

      What is it with you anyway; do you wake up in bad form, then wonder who you can possibly take it out on? And seeing as how you can’t exactly heap verbal abuse on all your minions in Digitech, because they’d rightly haul your arse through the courts for bullying in the workplace, you think, ah ha! My worthless husband can get a tongue lashing from me and that’ll set me up for the whole morning!

      Because it’s always just all about you, isn’t it? Let’s never forget, we’re all just extras in the Jo Hargreaves show, designed purely to snap to your beat.

      Your ever-loving hubbie,

      Dave.

      PS. Lucky guess. Yes, I am staying at Mama’s. Purely because, fond as I am of Bash, his idea of a nutritious meal is a) one that can be shoved into a microwave for three minutes or under and b) comes in a container that is reusable as an ashtray.

      PPS. As for clearing out the last of my things, I’ll do it when it bloody well suits me. Which as it happens, is this weekend, when you’re back home.

      PPPS. Because we have to talk, Jo. Be reasonable. You must, somewhere deep down beneath that thorny bracken that surrounds your heart these days, be aware of this.

      PPPPS. See you when you’re back.

      Safe trip. Thinking of you. And in spite of what you may think, sending you love.

      Jo was power walking through the airport when that particular email pinged through and after she read it, had to take several deep breaths to try and get her blood pressure back to normal. In for two, out for three, she told herself, in for two and out for three.

      But it wasn’t working. Christ, how did Dave always manage to have this effect on her? And did he think insulting her was going to make this any easier?

      Don’t answer it, she told herself. Rise above it. Be the bigger person here. But it was no use, two seconds later, her fingers were busily tap tapping away on her iPhone.

       From: [email protected]

       To: [email protected]

       Re: The last of your things.

       April 17th, 8.56 a.m.

       Oh feck off with yourself, Dave. What gives you the right to start having a go at me?

       Please understand that I really do mean it. If I come home to my flat (which I own, which is in my name and mine only, may I remind you), with your shite still littering the place, then I’m changing the locks and flinging the last of your junk out the window. The way I feel right now, I can’t tell you the pleasure it’ll give me. Plus it’ll certainly give the neighbours a right good laugh to get a look at your last anniversary present to me. Because FYI, a print of a red Ferrari is my idea of cheap, tasteless tat.

       (Look it up in the dictionary. You’ll find it right there, under, ‘Dave Evans: arsehole’.)