Praise for the novels of Claudia Carroll

‘An original, funny and poignant story … A very modern fairytale, full of Claudia’s trademark wit and humour’

Sheila O’Flanagan

‘Full of warmth, humour and emotion, this is a wonderfully written, unconventional love story that charms from the very first page. I adored it and didn’t want it to end. Read it – I guarantee you’ll love it’

Melissa Hill

‘It bubbles and sparkles like pink champagne. A hugely entertaining read’

Patricia Scanlan

‘An emotional roller-coaster ride … keeps the reader wondering until the very end’

Irish Independent

‘Claudia Carroll has done it again, with a heroine you just want fate to smile on’

Heat

Readers adore the novels of Claudia Carroll – here is a glimpse of just how much!

‘I was holding my breath … the story really touched my heart’

‘Fun, breezy, and kept me guessing and oohing and aaahhhing until the end!’

‘Truly captivating’

‘Will lift your spirits’

‘If you love page-turning women’s fiction with depth then this book is for you!’

‘I so enjoyed this unusual story of friendships and love’

‘Very fresh and brilliantly plotted’

‘A total page-turner with companionship, fear, laughter, and a whole bunch of other emotions that will take you on a journey like no other’

‘Officially one of my favourite books of the year!’

‘Some sobs, but lots of laughter and joy’

All She Ever Wished For

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

This ebook edition 2016

Copyright © Claudia Carroll 2016

Cover design © Nikki Dupin 2016

Claudia Carroll asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008140724

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780008140748

Version: 2016-03-17

Dedication

This book is warmly dedicated to a very special lady, who will be much missed.

For Eleanor Dryden, with love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise for the Novels of Claudia Carroll

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Bernard

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Bernard

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Kate

Tess

Tess

Kate

Epilogue

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Valentine’s Day, Dublin

Two years ago

In this day and age, is there anything that says ‘I love you’ more than a Chubb padlock fastened tight onto a bridge? And like a growing number of landmarks around the world, the Ha’penny Bridge is only coming down in them. You’ll often catch couples sneakily fastening locks to the metal grills on either side of the bridge’s arch, pledging undying love (weather permitting), then tossing the key down into the River Liffey beneath.

Every red-letter date in the calendar without fail, you can be guaranteed the Ha’penny Bridge will groan under the weight of all these tiny little love locks, with particular spikes around Valentine’s Day and New Year. After all, it’s a romantic and slightly different way to show your commitment to that someone special, isn’t it? Plus it sure as hell beats a bunch of overpriced red roses from Tesco.

But every so often you’ll see a forlorn single revisiting a lock, maybe touching it wistfully, then sadly walking away. And you’ll find yourself wondering what their story could possibly be.

Like tonight, for instance.

A woman was standing tall and proud beside one such lock and from behind you’d think absolutely nothing at all was the matter with her. She had choppy, blonde, bang-on-trend hair and stood ramrod straight with her head held high as she stared out over the Liffey swirling beneath.

It was only when you caught her profile sideways on, you could see how upset she was. This woman looked all out of place here; there was something way too regal and composed about the way she stood all alone on the bridge, while backpackers in puffa jackets and exhausted tourists barged past her on their way to and from the pubs and restaurants of Temple Bar.

No way was a lady this classy and elegant on her way to some booze-up or hen night in Temple Bar, that was for certain. She was older, late thirties at a guess, slim and elegant in red-soled Louboutin high heels and huddling a blonde fur coat around her shoulders, to ward off the icy February rain and chill. Real fur too, you could tell at a glance. She had no umbrella either, but didn’t seem to care that she was slowly getting drenched. Instead she just stood right beside the lovelocks, staring out over the river and clinging onto the coat; silent, unchecked tears running down her coldly angular face.

But if this lady thought she was passing by anonymously and completely unnoticed, she was wrong. At that exact moment, a much younger woman taking a short cut across the bridge spotted her, and even though she was running late for a movie screening, suddenly found herself stopping dead in her tracks.

Because she’d recognised the lady standing proudly beside all the lovelocks. As would anyone who’d bothered to look closely enough. This was Kate King, the Kate King. There was hardly anyone in the country who wouldn’t have known who she was, barring if they’d lived inside a cave for the last fifteen years.

Everyone knows a Glamazon like Kate King; or at least, everyone thinks that they do. She’s the type who’s forever in the papers flaunting her statement homes – and yes, that’s homes plural – or gracing high society dos, or else maybe perched on a TV sofa discussing her ‘charity work’. Always glossy and smiley and skinny, with her filthy rich husband never too far from her side. Kate King really was the woman who had it all.

But why the woman who had it all was now crying on a bridge in public in the lashing rain was quite another thing. It was a bit like stumbling across the Queen bawling her eyes out over the Thames; one of those things that you just couldn’t imagine happening.

Tess hesitated. She was dead late for the movie now and Bernard would probably be furious with her, but it felt wrong to just walk by when there was someone beside her clearly distressed and needing help. Kate King really did seem to be in a right state; supposing she was on the verge of doing something stupid like throwing herself over the bridge? Then Tess would have to read all about it in the next day’s papers, knowing that she might have been able to do something, but instead chose to keep on walking, just so she could be on time for some obscure Mexican art house movie that Bernard insisted on seeing.

‘Excuse me,’ she said gingerly, approaching the lady. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, but are you OK?’

Kate King turned sharply to look at her and Tess was shocked to see two puffy, red eyes with mascara running all the way down that famously beautiful, sculpted face. You never saw a woman like this looking anything less than flawlessly composed and immaculate in magazines and on the telly. Tess almost wondered if this could possibly be one and the same person.

No response.

‘Maybe you’d like me to get you a taxi?’ Tess asked her gently. ‘You could shelter under my umbrella till we find you one?’

‘Please just go away,’ came the clipped response.

‘But you’re getting soaked!’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Oh, well … sorry to disturb you,’ said Tess, taken aback. ‘I only meant to—’

‘Look, I’d really like some privacy. Can’t you just leave me in peace?’

Her tone was brusque now, dismissive. She meant what she said. So Tess backed off, wondering what the hell could possibly have gone so wrong in Kate King’s flawlessly perfect A-list life that someone like her was left all alone and sobbing on the Ha’penny Bridge in the pouring rain. For a split second, she hesitated, overwhelmed with guilt for leaving and walking away. Should she turn back? Maybe try to engage with her a bit more?

‘Whoever you are,’ Kate King said, sensing Tess wavering right by her shoulder. ‘I’m sure you mean well, but I’d really like you to move on.’

So, left with little choice in the matter, Tess did as she was told, shook the excess rain off her umbrella and quietly went on her way.

She could barely concentrate on the movie though. Instead, all she could do was think about Kate King, and wonder.

KATE

The Present

And so it was happening. Now. Today. This morning. There was no getting out of it and certainly no turning back. At that thought alone, she felt another huge, violent stomach retch and this time barely made it as far as the bathroom. Her third time to throw up so far today.

Oh Christ, she thought, slumped against the bathroom floor – for a brief, fleeting moment savouring the cool feel of the marble tiles against her skin – have I really brought all this on myself? Have I really been that stupidly short-sighted? Isn’t there any way out of it?

She felt as weak and useless as a butterfly pinned to a card. But like a character in a Greek tragedy, the inevitable was slowly coming to get her and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

If it’s any small consolation, she thought bitterly while she waited on yet another wave of nausea to pass, you’ve got absolutely no one to blame but yourself.

TESS

The present

What would Kate Middleton do?

Easy, I thought, fidgeting with the letter that had just arrived and forcing my shaky legs as far as the bedroom window for a few nice, deep, soothing breaths. Kate Middleton would stay serenely calm and at all costs not let a potential disaster like this get to her. She’d call Carole and Pippa who would instantly rush around to her side with wise words of wisdom and support. She’d book herself in for a nice, relaxing blow dry, shoehorn herself into a neat little coat dress from Reiss, then get back out there, arm clamped onto Prince William’s with a bright smile plastered across her face.

It’s impossible to plan any wedding without a blip and it would seem that this is mine. So now I just have to figure a way out of it, that’s all.

‘Oh, I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OKAAAAYYY!’ I hear my dad warbling from out in the back garden, as he waves the hedge trimmer in huge threatening swoops, Darth Vader-style. All to the soundtrack of electronic buzzing that’s only marginally more deafening than that instrumental bit in Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’, and Christ alone knows that’s bad enough.

‘Jacko? You’ll do yourself an injury!’ Mum yells from the kitchen window. ‘If you lose a limb cutting back those bushes, you needn’t come crying to me, you roaring eejit.’

‘I cut down treeeees, I wear high heels, suspenders and a braaaaaa! I wish I’d been a girlie, just like my dear Papa!’ Dad keeps on screeching in a surprisingly passable baritone, considering that Mum never tires of reminding him how useless he is in all other walks of life.

‘And where’s Tess gone? I thought she was out there helping you?’

‘She was meant to be, but she vanished the minute the post came,’ Dad shrugs. ‘More wedding shite, I suppose.’

I can hear the conversation as loud and clear as that. The only problem is that as I’m listening, the four walls of my bedroom tilt a bit and I suddenly have to focus very hard on breathing.

In for two, out for four, in for two and out for four …

‘Tess, are you in the loo?’ Mum yells up the stairs. ‘You’ve been up there for ages. Are you a bit constipated, do you think?’

‘No, Mum,’ I somehow manage to squawk back down at her, in a voice I barely even recognise as my own.

Stay by the window and keep breathing, just keep breathing.

‘Well I think the base of the wedding cake is nearly done, are you coming down to do a Mary Berry on it?’

‘Did I hear you say wedding cake?’ Dad butts in from the garden, switching off the hedge trimmers. ‘Ahh lovely, you can cut me a nice, juicy, big slice while you’re at it. I’m starving.’

‘It’s not for you, it’s for the guests; I wouldn’t waste it on you. Now you just pick up those branches and stop annoying me,’ is Mum’s comeback, as she slams the kitchen window firmly shut.

All this is for me, I remind myself, trying my damnedest to blank out the letter that’s just arrived; this curt, five-line letter that’s just caused my whole world to shift on its axis. Which side is it if you’re having a heart attack? I wonder. Left or right? Because right now my breath will only come in short, jagged shards and the tightness around my chest is almost making me want to black out.

Twisting the letter in my hand, I force myself to keep on breathing and look down onto the garden, to the grass, the leaves, to my mother’s petunias in full bloom, to the peaceful, lovely sight down below. To absolutely anything that might take my mind off this.

Exactly half an hour ago, I hadn’t a care in the world. There I was, out the back helping Dad with the garden, mowing the lawn and picking up dead leaves. Half an hour ago, I was happily bustling in and out of the kitchen checking on the wedding cake base and trying to convince Mum to relax and leave me to it. That I’d take care of everything. That getting married at home needn’t be the huge stress-inducing nightmare you’d think. That I could expertly organise my wedding reception in our own back garden and that I could easily manage all the catering myself. That with a bit of imagination, Bernard and I could have a simple, intimate, homely wedding and save ourselves a complete fortune in the process.

No, not now, this cannot be happening now.

I have a marquee arriving in a few weeks’ time, for God’s sake. I have fifty-five guests and counting descending on us and I still have to do all the marinades before the big day. I have to hire the glasses, cutlery and dinner plates, and that’s before I even get started on the flowers. I somehow have to get twinkly lights dangling all over our back garden, so it’ll look all magical and elegant when the sun sets. I have all my pals roped in to help me with what little free time they can spare. I have lists and more lists and daily targets that, until a short half an hour ago, I was confidently on top of.

From the minute I convinced Mum, Dad and my sister Gracie that we could have the reception here, I’ve been at pains to reassure them that a home wedding needn’t be a nightmare. That it could all be simple and stress-free and just beautiful.

‘We’ll put on one helluva show,’ I proudly told my family.

‘… and not disgrace ourselves in front of the Pritchards,’ Mum finished the sentence for me, with just a tiny bit more ice in her voice than I’d have liked. ‘Because, frankly, I could do without that snobby shower looking down their noses at us any more than they already do.’

‘Now Mum, it’s not a “who lives in the posher house” competition,’ I told her as soothingly as I could. ‘I don’t want my wedding to be about the haves and the have-nots. It’s going to be simple and small and more importantly, cost-effective. Have you even seen what hotels charge for wedding receptions these days? Thirty grand and upwards! And that’s before you even buy a bottle of water for your guests. Besides, the Pritchards will be dream wedding guests, wait till you see.’

‘Hmm,’ Mum sniffed doubtfully. ‘Well, if I have to listen to one more patronising remark out of them, I’m warning you, Tess, I won’t be held responsible.’

The Pritchards are my future in-laws, you see, and in sharp contrast to us, they live in an elegant two-storey, over-basement, Victorian redbrick statement home in Donnybrook. They’ve got about five reception rooms that they hardly ever use, including a drawing room, a conservatory and a sitting room with dusty hardback books piled everywhere which they insist on referring to as ‘the library’.

My family, however, have none of the above. And so for one day and one day only, our modest and very ordinary little semi-d in an estate full of houses just like it, is about to be transformed into fairyland; a bit like a low-budget Santa’s Grotto on Christmas Eve.

At least, until half an hour ago, that was the plan.

I stick my head closer to the window, savouring the lovely, soothing spring breeze and as the minutes tick by, gradually begin to feel more and more composed. Better. At least now my heart rate seems to be heading back down into double digits. Definitely better.

OK, I try my best to think calmly and rationally, gulping in one last mouthful of fresh air before snapping the bedroom window shut. So according to this letter a major problem has arisen, but I’m going to deal with it efficiently and with minimal stress. I’ll tell Bernard, of course, because he’s officially the most understanding man on the planet and if he can’t think of a way to get me out of this, then no one can. Then I’ll mention it to my nearest and dearest on a strict need-to-know basis only, because this is surmountable. After all, people manage to wangle their way out of situations like this all the time, don’t they?

Besides, it’s just not possible. True, there’s never a good time for an axe like this to fall, but the timing here really couldn’t be much worse. In one month’s time, Bernard and I are getting married; it’s as simple as that.

So trying my best to channel Kate Middleton, I trip downstairs with the letter clutched in my fist to somehow break the news to my wedding-planner-in-chief. Which would be Mum. I find her in the kitchen, walloping the hell out of the Magimix, busy making the icing for my wedding cake.

‘Where did you disappear off to? You’re supposed to be here helping your dad and me,’ she says crossly when she sees me coming into the kitchen. Bear in mind this is a woman who’s got about two hundred pounds of lamb cutlets in the deep freeze. You don’t mess with a woman with two hundred pounds of anything in the deep freeze.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say in a wobbly voice I barely recognise as my own, ‘but the thing is, Mum, something a bit, well, unexpected has just come up—’

‘You’re as bad as that oaf out the back garden. Now grab an apron and start making yourself useful. You can drain the rum marinade off the sultanas and dump them into the mixture. Barring your father hasn’t already drunk the rum himself, that is. Which, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t put past him.’

‘Mum, you’re not listening to me—’

‘Jesus, Tess, you’re worse than useless! What was the point in you taking time off work to help if all you’re going to do is stand there and let me do everything? May I remind you, madam, that getting married at home was all your bright idea?’ Then turning back to her Magimix, she mutters darkly, ‘getting married to Bernard in the first place was all your bright idea too, let’s not forget.’

Now normally that last sentence would automatically trigger The Conversation. The same bloody conversation I’ve been having with just about everyone ever since Bernard and I first got engaged. But under the circumstances I let it slide and instead just shove the letter under Mum’s nose, then wait the approximate two-second delay while she processes it.

But there’s silence. A long, bowel-withering silence.

‘Well, this has to be a joke,’ she eventually says, all the blood suddenly draining from her face. ‘Maybe something Monica and Stella would do to get a rise out of you before the hen night?’

Monica and Stella are my two best pals and although they both love a good giggle as much as we all do, there’s no way in hell they’d ever contemplate doing something this cruel.

‘It’s not a joke. This isn’t the girls messing. Look at the headed notepaper. This is legit. Believe me, it’s about as legit as it gets.’

It says a lot about just how serious this is that Mum abandons her Magimix and slumps down wearily at the kitchen table, unable to say much else.

She doesn’t need to though.

The crumpled look on her face tells me everything I need to know.

KATE

Your Daily Dish.ie

October 2014

TROUBLE IN PARADISE?

Here at Your Daily Dish we’re receiving troubling reports from the Castletown House residence regarding billionaire Globtech founder Damien King and his well-known socialite wife, Kate.

The Gardai have said that following a ‘complaint of a most serious nature’, a court order was issued to Mrs Kate King at the property earlier today. A source close to Mrs King says that the order is in relation to a valuable painting, an end-period Rembrandt known as A Lady of Letters, which we’re told, is ‘a source of contention between Damien and Kate King at the present time’.

The painting is said to have been valued at upwards of €95 million. The Kings are well known to have a notable art collection, the jewel in the crown being A Lady of Letters. Sources tell us that Mrs King ‘is cooperating with the police in any way she can’. It’s not yet known if charges are to follow or not.

This of course has our heads spinning at Your Daily Dish. Can our favourite celebrity couple really be warring over a painting? To such an extent that a court order was issued?

Rumours have been rife for some time now that the couple have been living apart and are on the brink of separation. This troubling report would appear to confirm it.

Remember, you read it here first, on Your Daily Dish.

TESS

The present

‘The main thing is not to panic,’ says Bernard, my hubby-to-be, when I call to fill him in on what’s just happened, my imminent heart attack, etc.

‘Try not to panic?’ I say, doing the exact polar opposite. ‘Bernard, I’ve just been summoned for jury service, bloody jury service and you’re telling me not to panic?’

I consult the now half-scrunched letter in my hand for about the thousandth time today. ‘Here it is in cold, hard print. I’ve got to be at the Criminal Courts of Justice at 9 a.m. this coming Monday morning. So forgive me for panicking when this lands on me less than a month and counting before D-Day! Do you realise how much there’s still left to do?’

It’s a rhetorical question; of course Bernard hasn’t the first clue what’s left to do. After all, he’s a forty-three-year-old heterosexual male. What the hell does he know about weddingy floral centrepieces or alternate menu choices for coeliac lacto-ovo vegetarians?

‘Now I strongly suggest you stay calm dearest,’ Bernard says patiently. ‘All this panic is getting you nowhere. A nice cup of tea, that’ll soon set you to rights.’

Bernard, it has to be said, thinks that there’s no drama in this life that can’t be instantly righted with a cup of Clipper gold blend.

‘The thing you have to understand,’ I sigh, regrouping and trying my best to keep cool, ‘is that with a wedding like this, there’s a whole clatter of stuff that you can only leave till these last, precious few weeks. So there’s no way in hell I can handle something as huge as jury service right now. Besides, I’ve got my family and pals all roped into helping me out before the big day, how could I possibly just skive off to court and leave them to do all the heavy lifting for me?’

‘Well, I’m sure they’d be most understanding, under the circumstances—’

‘No, I can’t do it, Bernard, it just isn’t right. I won’t do it to my friends and I certainly wouldn’t put my family through that. I need to be here working around the clock along with everyone else, that’s all there is to it. After all, we’re talking our dream wedding here.’

‘I suggest you just try to put this whole thing into perspective,’ he says calmly. ‘Remember, it’s nothing personal. Being summoned for jury service can happen to any of us, at any time.’

‘I know, but I’ve got my whole life ahead of me to deal with stuff like this! Why does it have to be right now? Landing on me out of a clear blue sky?’

‘Such a pity you don’t live in the UK,’ Bernard muses calmly. ‘Because over there, you know, you’re allowed to turn down jury service twice and only on the third time are you obliged to serve.’

‘But, sweetheart, I don’t live in the UK. It’s totally different here; if you’re summoned, you’ve got to turn up, simple as that. And you know the nightmare I had at work trying to get time off – I can’t have all that precious time eaten into with this crapology.’

‘Now there’s absolutely no need for neologism,’ he chides gently, and it’s all I can do to bite my tongue and ask him to stop using words I don’t understand. ‘The critical thing is to remember that this is how our judicial system works. That’s how our democracy works.’

‘I already know all of that, but the thing is, how am I supposed to get out of it?’

‘In fact, did I ever tell you about the time I was summoned just a few months before I was due to take my doctorate?’ he chats away, sounding perfectly relaxed about this, oblivious to the rising note of hysteria in my voice. ‘I still had reams of research to do on the painting technique of the seventeenth-century Dutch Masters, with particular reference to Vermeer, which as you know is a highly contentious subject which needs a plethora of astute writing, not to mention the most forensic editing—’

‘Eh, no offence, but can we just get back to the point?’

No rudeness intended in cutting across him, but when Bernard gets going on either Vermeer or Rembrandt, you could be on the phone all night.

‘Sorry, sausage. But just remember that when it comes to court service, just because you’ve been summoned, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll be selected.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, both the Prosecution and Defence have the perfect right to turn down any proposed juror on the slightest pretext, you know.’

‘So all I have to do is turn up at the courts, hang around for a bit and then maybe I’ll just be discharged at the end of the day?’ I ask hopefully, for the first time since that bloody letter landed on me this morning, seeing a sudden glint of light in this nightmare. Could he possibly be right? Is that all there is to it? After all, if all this jury service malarkey takes no more than a single day out of my schedule, then maybe – just maybe – all is not lost.

‘Better than that, sausage,’ Bernard chats on. ‘Fact is, there are a whole myriad of reasons why you can plead ineligibility to serve. So go online, check them all out and remember, at all costs, nil desperandum. Now I’ve really got to dash, I’m afraid. I’ve got a tutorial with my MA students at 2 p.m., so I’ll call you later. That alright with you, dearest?’

‘Of course it is,’ I smile, for the first time all day starting to feel the tight constraint that’s been around my chest actually start to loosen a little.

You see? This is why I love Bernard. This is why he and I make the perfect couple. This is why we work, no matter what anyone says. And believe me, in the run-up to this wedding, they’ve pretty much said it all. At stressed-out times like this, I can always rely on him to be the sober yang to my slightly more highly strung ying.

Even if I haven’t the foggiest what his Latin reference meant.

*

Turns out Bernard is absolutely on the money. When I log onto the court’s website, there’s a whole section on who isn’t eligible for jury service, not to mention all the reasons why you can be instantly disqualified the minute a Jury Selection Officer casts their eye on you. My eye greedily scrolls down the page, desperately trying to spot one that might just apply to me. Or if all else fails, one that I can plausibly fake and hopefully get away with.

Bernard, I know, would baulk at my doing anything that even remotely smacks of dishonesty, never having told an out-and-out lie in the whole course of his life. But then, I remind myself, Bernard doesn’t have to organise catering for over fifty guests, get a marquee up, fully stock a bar, scrub and clean this house from top to bottom, then hound all our last-minute guests who’ve yet to RSVP. And that’s just what I’ve got to do this week alone. So it’s actually reasonably calm and quiet compared with the weeks that lie ahead, but don’t get me started.

OK. So far the court’s website is telling me that if you’re in any way involved with the administration of justice, then you’re automatically disqualified, simple as that. I scan quickly down the checklist to find out exactly who they mean, but given that I’m neither the President, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, a guard, a prison officer, a practicing barrister, a solicitor or a court officer, then that’s feck all use to me.

My eye keeps speed-scrolling down, the words almost like a blur in front of me.

‘Those who have been convicted of a serious offence in Ireland, those who have ever been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years or more, those who, within the last ten years, have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least three months and have served at least part of that sentence … ’

Silently cursing myself for being law-abiding all these years, I keep on reading, praying that I’ll stumble on some handy little get-out-of-jail-free card that’ll neatly extricate me from all of this shite.

‘Persons aged 65 and upwards … members of either the House of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament), members of the Council of State, the Comptroller and Auditor General … a person in Holy Orders, a minister of any religious denomination or community, members of monasteries and convents, aircraft pilots, full-time students and ships’ masters … ’

Bugger, bugger, bugger, I think. The slow, sickening panic I’ve been holding at bay starting to rise again.

‘Those who provide an important community service, including practicing doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, vets, chemists, etc … ’

Important community service? Yes, success! We might just have a winner on our hands here. Finally, this could actually mean all my problems are solved, I think, suddenly feeling calmer. And OK, so maybe working as a personal trainer in a gym mightn’t necessarily be considered ‘important community service’, but plenty of my clients, not to mention my manager, would certainly disagree.

Well, this is it then, I decide firmly. I’m not officially summoned for jury service till next week, so cometh the hour, cometh the woman. I’ll stride into the courts, be polite and professional, but by God, I’ll plead my case. I work in a busy city centre health club, I’ll tell them, and I’ve a long list of clients who are completely dependent on me.

And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll flash the engagement ring, say the wedding is less than a month away and, what the hell, if they’ll only see reason here, I might even invite every single solicitor and barrister, as well as whoever’s standing in the dock in handcuffs along to the afters.

Feck it, I think, firmly snapping my laptop shut, mind made up. I’ll name our first-born child after the judge if it’ll give Bernard and I back our dream wedding day.

Because after what I’ve been through to get here, nothing is going to compromise that. No court case, no legal threats, absolutely nothing.

KATE

The Chronicle (weekend supplement)

January 2001

A SPECIAL REPORT by Maggie Kelly

There’s nothing more headily infectious than being around a young couple, newly in love and with their whole lives ahead of them. So you can imagine my excitement at interviewing Globtech founder and scion of the famous King dynasty, Damien King, along with his beautiful young girlfriend, successful model Kate Lee.

We meet for afternoon tea at the Weston hotel and straight away I can sense that this really is a genuine love match. Damien is courteous, polite and so much taller and more handsome in the flesh than I’d ever have imagined, while Kate is even more stunningly gorgeous than in her photos and on her countless TV appearances – if that’s even possible. She’s just one of those rare natural beauties that it’s impossible to peel your eyes off.

In the past she’s been likened to the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, but even that comparison fails to do her justice. Kate’s super-tall, as you’d expect, with that famous waist-length, poker-straight blonde hair and cheekbones you could feasibly grate cheese off. She jokes that she stands a shoeless inch taller than her boyfriend and he laughs this off, saying, ‘You see? We’re not even together a full year and already Kate’s got me looking up to her!’

But there’s something more than that. There’s a glow about Kate, an inner radiance that no amount of clean living, Bikram yoga or daily juicing can give; in short, she seems a woman very much in love.

Over tea and clotted cream scones (which I notice Kate just picks delicately around the edges of), I ask the one question we’re all dying to know the answer to.

‘So how did you two lovebirds first meet?’

‘Will you tell it, darling, or will I?’ he asks.

‘I’ll certainly give it my best shot,’ she smiles, taking a sip of Earl Grey tea. She speaks softly, so much so that I almost have to strain to hear her over all the hotel’s chat and clatter in the background.

‘Well, we first met about a year ago.’

‘Eleven months, three weeks and four days to be exact,’ Damien interrupts and she laughs him off.

‘Back then I was working as a model in Paris, you see,’ she tells me, ‘and life was certainly hectic.’

Kate’s selling herself short here of course, because we’re all familiar with just how successful her modelling career has been to date. It’s no exaggeration to say that she’s probably been one of this country’s best-known faces ever since she was first scouted as a teenager on a night out with friends in Dublin.

I ask her a bit about how she first started out modelling and she laughs, claiming she still remembers it vividly.

‘Well there I was, all of seventeen years old, in a restaurant stuffing my face with pizza along with a few girlfriends,’ she says, ‘when next thing this older businessman-in-a-suit type approached our table and asked me for a quick word.’

‘A modelling scout?’ I guess.

‘Turned out that yes, he was. He introduced himself, handed me a business card and made all sorts of wild promises about what would happen if I’d only call the agency he represented.’

‘Now of course Kate is far too modest to say this,’ Damien interrupts, gazing at her fondly. ‘But, in fact, what this guy actually claimed was that his agency could make her a household name in next to no time.’

‘Of course, I giggled about it with my pals afterwards,’ Kate tells me, ‘but I suppose part of me was intrigued by what he’d said, because I did indeed make the call the next day.’

Which as it happened turned out to be one of the more life-changing events in the life of Kate Lee. Within a matter of weeks after that first auspicious meeting, she’d landed not only the top agent in London, but also lucrative catwalk work with Chanel in Paris.

‘It must have been dream come true stuff for you,’ I say, ‘but may I ask, weren’t your family at all worried about you? A young teenager let loose in Paris on her own?’

‘Turned out they were absolutely right to be as well,’ she says with a slight grimace.

‘Because she met someone quite unsuitable over there, didn’t you, darling?’ prompts Damien. ‘Some kind of photographer.’

‘Aurelian,’ says Kate.

‘Yes,’ says Damien. ‘I knew it was quite a girlie-sounding name.’

It’s easy to picture Aurelian as an almost stereotypically Parisian fashion photographer, with a couldn’t-really-care-less, shrug-it-away-and-light-a-Gauloise brand of sexiness. Kate tells me that about two years after they’d met she’d moved over to Paris full-time and not long after, by then virtually a household name with her career flying sky-high, they became engaged.

Which, it seems, is when all the trouble started.

‘You see, the wedding was supposed to take place in Dublin,’ she tells me, while Damien nods along, ‘at my family’s parish church. But, well you see … there was a bit of a glitch.’

‘Yes?’ I ask.

‘The ceremony was just weeks away,’ she goes on, ‘and I flew over to Dublin to take care of some last-minute preparations with my mum. And I’m sorry to say that she and I rowed.’

‘Which actually isn’t such a difficult thing to do if you knew Kate’s mother,’ quips Damien, sotto voce, ‘though of course I know you wouldn’t dream of printing that.’

‘It wasn’t just any old heated disagreement either,’ Kate goes on, ‘this was a full-on humdinger with screeching, yelling, the whole works.’

‘I won’t stand by and watch my only daughter make the biggest mistake of her life with some photographer that we know nothing about!’ says Damien, putting on a high falsetto voice.

Kate doesn’t laugh along though, I notice, instead she quietly tells me that she just turned on her heel, headed straight back to the airport and caught a last-minute flight back to Paris and back to her fiancé Aurelian. Back to their top-floor shared apartment at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the fashionable 6th arrondissement. Back, she’d doubtless hoped, to a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on.

‘Well, I was in for the shock of my life,’ she goes on, describing how she’d burst in through the door, delighted to be home though not for a moment expecting Aurelian to be there. It was late afternoon and she knew for a fact he was due to be out on a fashion shoot at the Tuileries.

Prompted by Damien, she vividly describes throwing her wheelie bag on the hall floor, kicking off her shoes, about to go into the kitchen when, lo and behold, she heard voices coming from the bedroom.

‘Anyway, let’s just say that I discovered my fiancé was being unfaithful to me,’ she says discreetly, trailing off there and leaving the story dangling.

‘No, darling, the press will want a little more colour to the story,’ Damien insists. ‘Tell how you threw the bedroom door open – and well, there they were.’

‘There’s really no need,’ says Kate demurely. ‘I think anyone who reads this will be well able to draw their own conclusions.’

‘Kate was horrified to see Aurelian in bed with another model who she’d worked with and who she knew very slightly,’ says Damien, ignoring the warning hand Kate places on his arm. ‘There they were, tucked up in bed together, sucking on cigarettes with a half-drunk bottle of champagne on the bedside table beside them, just to really hammer the point home. Must have been horrifying for you, you poor girl,’ he adds, stroking her hand.

‘So what happened next?’ I ask, intrigued.

‘Naturally she did what any woman would do,’ says Damien. ‘Got the hell out of there while he yelled all sorts of crap after her, you can only imagine. “Kate! C’est ne signifie rien! Elle ne veut rien dire!” ’

Kate flushes slightly at the embellishment, and steps in to take over the story.

‘What I actually did after that,’ she tells me, ‘was to jump into a cab and ask to go to Charles de Gaulle airport, mainly because I’d nowhere else to go and no one in Paris to turn to; which of course meant going back home, with my tail firmly between my legs.’

‘Can’t have been easy for you,’ I say sympathetically.

‘So Kate’s mother had actually been on the money about Aurelian all along,’ says Damien. ‘You see, darling? Mother knows best. And I’d like to add for the record that her mum and I get along like a house on fire.’

‘The problem was that when I arrived at the Air France ticket desk,’ says Kate, ‘I realised that I had absolutely no money on me. Not a red cent, nothing. Both my credit and debit cards were completely maxed out with pre-wedding buys, so of course they were of no use to me either.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘Well I hadn’t a clue where to go and I suppose I was still in utter shock. So I gave up pleading with the ground hostess at the ticket desk, went and found a free seat in the middle of the concourse and instantly burst into tears. Mortifyingly embarrassing sobs too, I’m afraid. I made such a spectacle of myself that people started to notice and look my way.’

And one person in particular, it seems. Because there was a bar just adjacent to where Kate was sobbing her eyes out and as pure chance would have it, there had also been a huge Six Nations rugby game on earlier that day, Ireland versus France. The bar was jam-packed with supporters all in high spirits, laying into the beers and whiling the time away before their return flight home.

‘So there I was with a gang of guys from college,’ says Damien, ‘and we were in fantastic form because Ireland had just done the unthinkable and beaten France 22–10 at the Stade de France that afternoon. As you can imagine, there were more than a few pints of the black stuff involved.’

‘And that’s when you first spotted Kate?’

‘Course I did, like just about every other red-blooded male there. You couldn’t miss this knockout beauty bawling her eyes out in the middle of the airport concourse.’

Kate for her part says she barely even took notice of anyone around her, but all of a sudden she was aware of a guy hovering close by and looking worriedly down on her. Tall, classically good-looking, with dark hair and a light tan, dressed in an Irish rugby jersey and with the rugby supporter’s obligatory pint of beer clamped to his hand.

‘So, egged on by the lads, I walked right up to her and came out with probably one of the cheesiest pick-up lines of all time,’ Damien grins.

‘I realise this is probably a stupid question,’ they say together, looking adoringly at one other, ‘but is everything OK?’

It seems that Damien then sat down on a free plastic seat beside her and when Kate looked at him she tells me she had an overwhelming feeling that she could trust this guy. He had soft eyes, for starters, and she shyly confesses that she’s always been a sucker for soft eyes. So she found herself telling him everything. He nodded, and listened to her tale of woe.

‘But he said absolutely nothing.’

‘Instead I just strode over to the ticket desk and paid for her return flight home—’

‘—So of course I insisted that I’d have to reimburse him the minute we got back home, but he was having none of it.’

At this point, the pair of them almost overlap each other in their eagerness to get the story out.

‘Anyway, I invited Kate to join my friends at the bar and they instantly took her under their wing. As you can imagine only too delighted that this stunningly beautiful, leggy blonde model had deigned to join us—’

‘—Damien had even managed to wangle seats on the flight so we were beside each other the whole way home.’

‘And when we’d landed safely—’

‘—Ever the gentleman, he insisted on dropping me right to my parents’ house – and he even managed to charm my mum over a mug of tea—’

‘—Like I always say, get the mother onside and it’s all plain sailing from there!’

But after I’ve switched off my tape recorder, Kate confides what really happened next. Befuddled and still punch-drunk from her emotional roller coaster of a day, it was only when her handsome saviour was leaving that she finally got around to asking him his full name.

‘It’s Damien King,’ he apparently grinned at her. ‘A lovely, warm, open smile too,’ she adds in that soft voice. ‘And I can’t tell you, after the day from hell that I’d just been through, how grateful I was to meet such a gentleman who looked after me and took care of me and who was … just so completely wonderful, really.’

Then came the clincher.

Instead of letting her pay him back for the ticket, Damien apparently insisted that instead she let him take her out to dinner. Only it had to be the following night and that wasn’t negotiable.

‘Before she’d time to change her mind.’

‘And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

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