The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan

Chapter Thirty

Garrett Castle is the sort of hotel that Fia thinks Ireland does particularly well: luxurious, but unpretentious. By now, thanks to her job, Fia has seen inside more fancy, five-star establishments than she once would have ever expected to. And she enjoys them – what’s not to like? – but deep down, she’s not sure she’s a five-star person. She doesn’t expect, or especially want, some minimum-wage employee to delicately place a napkin in her lap.

The Garrett Castle brand of things is more her style – which is to say, attentiveness that is warm, rather than subservient, in nature. It strikes her as what true hospitality should feel like. With turf fires in winter, unspoiled views and, of course, that grand facade with its turrets and battlements, it is the sort of place where one can rely on a good Sunday carvery, a little bit of whiskey in the porridge at breakfast, and nice hand creams in the bathrooms. What it must have cost for ZOLA to block book the hotel slap bang in the middle of wedding season, Fia dreads to think.

Although there’s a bus from Dublin, her father insisted on giving her a lift down here this morning, and it felt so nice – having someone insist on making her life that little bit easier – that Fia didn’t put up much of a protest.

By the time she makes her way into the hotel’s function room, the day’s programme is just about to begin. They’re starting with the financials, apparently, then moving on to a series of addresses from the managing partners of each of the firm’s four branches. Then … Fia’s not sure. She didn’t get that far in the email.

She lets her gaze scan the space, all set up for the occasion with chairs in concentric circles, a podium and a projector screen. The place is also swarming with people – several hundred of them, some looking more tired than others. Thankfully, Fia’s never suffered much with jetlag herself. Quickly, she finds herself swallowed up into the melee, moving from one half-conversation to the next, exchanging greetings and promises to catch up properly later. While there are plenty of people here, especially from the San Francisco and London offices, whom she’s never seen before in her life, there are lots of familiar faces, too.

It’s always a little strange, at the Summer Summit, seeing those she used to work with at the Dublin office. Simultaneously, Fia is one of them and not one of them. Especially with the lawyers around her own age, she feels obliged to demonstrate that she hasn’t, since flitting off to America, lost her accent or her interest in local happenings or otherwise become up her own arse. In conversation, she finds herself keen to make sure that they know that she knows that the whole New York business was just a matter of luck, really. There can be a fair bit of eye rolling on her part about the city and the work that she’s not sure she entirely means.

Then, there are those who used to be her superiors at the Dublin office. Seeing them is weird, too, but in a different way. For a long time, Fia remained keen to impress them – on the assumption that, at some point, she’d be returned to their purview. Today, her former supervisor spots her almost as soon as she walks in the door. And, even as they catch up, exchanging tidbits of professional news, Fia is struck by how little she actually cares about what this man thinks of her now. Does that mean she’s decided she’s really never coming back to Dublin, she wonders? She’s never made that mental leap consciously – but subconsciously?

In any event, the irony is that Damien McNulty – a man who once had her continually protest his entirely deserved parking fine for over a year, on the pretence that this constituted vital legal training – seems to be showing more interest in her than he ever has before. There’s a certain comradery in his approach, maybe even something – dare she imagine it – slightly deferential in his tone as he congratulates her on a recent contentious case, one involving the sort of large estate that is commonplace in Manhattan and entirely unheard of anywhere on the island of Ireland.

It’s all very peculiar, and Fia excuses herself, heading for the coffee station before the day kicks off properly. A long, white banqueting table has been set up in front of huge, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the woman ahead of Fia in line is staring out at the landscape.

‘Some view, huh?’ she says, in a broad American accent, and Fia looks outwards, too, as though seeing the place with new eyes: lush green hills in every direction and, in the distance, a blue strip of the sea. It is beautiful. She feels, in this moment, proud of it, as though somehow it reflects on her personally. She’s inordinately grateful that the weather looks set to hold up at least reasonably well.

‘Well, look what the cat dragged in,’ comes a voice from behind her then, and when she turns, Ryan Sieman is standing there, his arms already opening.

‘Look what the dog threw up,’ she tosses back, stepping into his hug. Driving down here this morning, Fia wondered when she might see him – if she’d see him.

‘That’s … gross,’ he says as they pull apart, though judging by his grin, he’s not too repulsed.

He’s as attractive as he ever was, Fia notes: nice suit, nice face, nice aftershave. More than any of that, there’s just something about Ryan that is, after several years of acquaintance by now, comforting – or maybe comforting is the wrong word. Familiar. She knows where she’s at with this guy.

‘And your thing wasn’t?’ she counters.

‘My thing was a common saying,’ he replies, and anything more she might offer is supplanted instead by a voice on a microphone, telling everyone to please take their seats for the first session.

‘Suppose we better do what we’re told,’ Ryan says, once the announcement concludes.

Fia nods towards the banqueting table. There are only two people ahead of her, now. ‘I’m going to hang on here for a sec, see if they’ll take pity on me. But … I’m sure our paths will cross at some stage.’

‘I’m sure they will. It’s good to see you, Fia,’ he says, meaningfully – flirtatiously.

‘It’s good to see you, too, Ryan,’ she replies, a lot less meaningfully, and with a roll of her eyes to boot. But the whole effect, she would admit, is likely just as flirtatious.

And why should it not be? She’s had a rough ride this past while, she tells herself. And her little sister has just got engaged, and it’s hard to meet an attractive man – most men are just so incredibly easy not to have sex with – and there really is no reason why this Summer Summit cannot proceed exactly as all the others have done before it.

No reason whatsoever.

It is well after lunch by the time Fia realizes that Benjamin is not here. There are so many people, and there is so much movement among them all, that reaching this conclusion actually requires an inordinate amount of effort on her part. She dedicates the entire morning and a good part of the afternoon session to the investigation. Scanning the room subtly while a panel of speakers chat away about client-centric lawyering, she’s finally able to move in her mind from he must be around here somewhere to no,he definitely is not.

She doesn’t know quite how to feel about that.

Of course, rewinding just a few weeks, she hadn’t wanted Benjamin anywhere near the Summer Summit. And, given how things have panned out between the two of them more recently, she’s certain that were he here, he’d only be glowering at her from across the room or resolutely disregarding her.

Still, it’s … unsettling, not knowing where he is.

By 7 p.m., however, Ryan is doing a remarkable job of distracting her. Once the buffet dinner arrived (and the bar opened), everyone began filtering out of the conference room, spreading out around the ground floor, finding surfaces on which to perch. Dotted among all the other little groups, Fia and Ryan have hit the jackpot with two plush wingback chairs in a bay window, paper plates of food in their laps.

As they chat away about work and life, she’s struck again by the sense of ease with him. He tells her about some irritating client (an absolute dose) and another (a pure chancer), and Fia delights in the phrases, in the feeling that Ryan pours into them. In the US, she’s often conscious of certain words, certain constructions, rubbing her up the wrong way. There’s nothing wrong with them as such; she can use them and understand them, but they just don’t quite feel like hers. In Ireland, by contrast, language always strikes her as delicious. She luxuriates in it, savours the way it all feels like it fits just right.

Eventually, their conversation meanders to the subject of upcoming summer holidays. Fia: none. Ryan: two weeks in Thailand.

‘I just thought feck it, you know? What’s the point of working if you can’t enjoy yourself?’ he says. ‘Things have been so mental this past six months with the new financial regulations coming in and all the clients going up the wall and blah blah. It’s been hard to fit in … anything else.’

‘So, you’re still single then,’ Fia says, taking her cue from him – she wants explicit confirmation of the situation there, and they’ve always had the type of relationship whereupon there was no need to beat about the bush. Such short pockets of time together, at these Summer Summits, are simply not compatible with maintaining any air of mystery. By necessity, it is a cards-on-the-table approach. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, so to speak.

‘Very single,’ he confirms. ‘Just can’t seem to find the right girl, you know?’ He says this last bit in the slightly ironic way that only a confident, attractive man can. ‘The mother’s nearly beside herself at this stage – doesn’t know where she went wrong. Will she ever have grandchildren? The whole shebang,’ he continues, and Fia smiles.

‘My sister’s just got engaged actually,’ she finds herself replying – and how funny to hear that aloud, like a perfectly ordinary fact.

‘Oh, great stuff,’ Ryan replies. ‘That’s brilliant news. What about you then? Don’t tell me you’ve been swept off your feet by some big Yank at long last, have you?’

Fia’s opening her mouth to respond when, in her pocket, her phone vibrates. Unknown number, the screen says when she looks at it. Nonetheless, at Ryan’s urging, Fia accepts the call, lifting the phone to her ear.

‘Is that Mrs Lowry?’ comes an unfamiliar Irish accent on the other end of the line.

‘No,’ Fia replies, and the words wrong number are almost out of her mouth, too, before she realizes. Her voice lowers instinctively into the handset, even as she flashes Ryan a reassuring smile. ‘I mean, um, yes? Who’s speaking?’

‘This is Janette,’ the caller replies. ‘I’m one of the nurses at the Mater Hospital. I’m just giving you a ring about your husband.’