Free From The Heart by Sheila O'Flanagan

is,’ said Aidan, ‘we’re here on this island. We might as well enjoy it. Regardless of what happens when we get home.’
    ‘You think so?’
    ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What’s the point in being miserable?’
    I smiled a little.
    ‘So . . . we pretend?’
    ‘If that’s what it takes.’
    ‘OK,’ I said.
    We should never have got married. And yet it hadn’t been the worst mistake of my life. Maybe I hadn’t actually made the worst mistake of my life yet. Maybe I’d never make it. I really didn’t know.
    ‘So – happy anniversary,’ he said, raising his glass again.
    And I clinked my glass against his as I wished him a happy anniversary too. Even though I still didn’t know whether I’d try the greener grass or not.

PHONE A FRIEND
    I had a headache. The sort that the advertisers describe as a tense, nervous headache, where you know that it’s the fact that your shoulders are knotted up which is making the pain start at the back of your neck before pounding at your temples. My shoulders had been knotted up for hours and my head was aching because it had been a terrible day, one where nothing I could do was right. First off, I was late for work: leaves on the line or some kind of pathetic railway excuse for the train not showing up. I clattered into the office knowing that it was going to be busy and then spilled the double-mocha coffee I’d grabbed on the way in all over the brochures I’d spent ages getting together the previous evening for a presentation my boss was giving in an hour’s time. So it was back to the printer and the photocopier and the binder – by eleven my head was already splitting.
    Christine, my boss, was less than sympathetic and didn’t accept the leaves-on-the-line excuse for my lateness. She blamed it on what she called my erratic, juvenile lifestyle of late nights and too much drink. Sometimes she had a point when she ranted at me but not today. The night before hadn’t been a late night. It should’ve been because I was supposed to be going out with my boyfriend, Ian, but he’d phoned to say that he was busy and he couldn’t make it and he’d see me tonight instead – maybe. Ian’s phone call worried me. It was the third time he’d been too busy to meet me in the last month and I was getting the impression that he was cooling off on things. I didn’t really want him to cool off on me. Ian is strikingly attractive, well-fancied by every girl who sees him, and (the icing on the cake) he’s loaded. Not exactly personally loaded but his folks have a huge house on Sorrento Road with its own gym, swimming pool and, I kid you not, full-time housekeeper. Ian was a good catch and I didn’t intend to let him go without a fight. Besides, I was crazy about him and it wasn’t just because of his looks and his money. It was because we had good times together and our late nights were usually very late and very exciting. The trouble was that he also had a very exciting life when he wasn’t with me. He works in advertising and he’s forever going to media bashes at trendy places. Last night, besides being too busy to call me, he’d also been photographed at the opening of the latest hotspot nightclub with a gorgeous ginger-haired girlette hanging out of him. The picture had been in the Independent . When I asked about it he simply laughed and said that she was part of the package. I was afraid to ask what the rest of the package actually was.
    Although I’d spoken to him already that morning, I’d tried ringing him again during the few moments of unfrenzied office activity later in the day, but I kept getting his voice-mail, and I didn’t want to leave a message. I didn’t wish to appear madly needy but I wanted him to know that where he was and what he was doing mattered to me. Because, as far as I was concerned, Ian Travers wasn’t going to join my list of the ones who got away. His name wasn’t going to appear after Les, John, David, Stephen, Alan, Michael, Stuart,