Once in a Lifetime
Cathy Kelly

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Copyright © Cathy Kelly 2009

Cathy Kelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for 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.

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Ebook Edition © February 2012 ISBN: 9780007389346

Version: 2017-11-21

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For Dylan, Murray and John, with all my love

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Epilogue

Excerpt from The House on Willow Street

Prologue

Chapter One

Back Ads

About the Author

By the same author:

About the Publisher

Prologue

Star Bluestone had talked to bees all her life. She talked to her flowers too, murmuring to the rare yellow poppies she’d nurtured from seeds gathered in the old Italianate garden thirty miles away across the Wicklow hills. She and the young Kiwi gardener there had such great chats, he walking her through the orchard and reaching up to cradle a baby apple bud the way another man might touch a woman.

He understood that people who loved the soil talked to their plants and to the bees whose careful industry made their flowers bloom. Even though he was only thirty to Star’s sixty years, he didn’t think she was an eccentric old lady. Rather, he was impressed by Star’s encyclopaedic knowledge of plant life. His earnest, handsome face became animated when they talked.

When she watched this kind boy, Star always remembered fondly that good gardeners make good lovers. Nobody capable of the tenderness required to separate delicate fronds of fern for replanting would ever be heavy-handed with another person’s body.

It had been a few years since Star had lain in a man’s arms. She’d had many lovers, but the one she would remember for the rest of her life, the one whose memory was imprinted upon her skin, hadn’t been a gardener. He’d been a poet, although that wasn’t how most people knew him. To the world, he was a conventional man, handsome, certainly, with beautiful manners and an important job waiting for him. To her, he was the man who sat with her under the stars and recited poetry as he traced his fingers along her face and talked about their future.

That had been over thirty-five years ago. Star talked to flowers and her beloved bees in their white hives back then too.

When she’d been growing up, her school friends hadn’t understood why Star did this, but they didn’t question it. After all, Star was different in most things. So was her mother. Their mothers didn’t grow herbs with such skill or know how to brew potions of feverfew and camomile to soothe menstrual cramps, nor did they stand gazing up at the Midsummer moon.

Eliza Bluestone did, and that it picked her out from all the other mothers in the small town of Ardagh was both a blessing and a curse to Star. The blessing was the knowledge her mother gave her. The curse was that knowing so much made her separate from all her friends.

Eliza mightn’t have told her daughter all the wisdom in her huge, midnight-dark eyes, but that knowledge somehow transferred itself to Star anyhow.

When she was a lithe young girl of twenty, and wanted to dance with her friends and flirt with young men, being wise was an impediment. She just knew that few people would be lucky enough to meet their soul mate in a pub ten miles from their home. Finding the right man to be her husband was going to be hard because the Bluestone family–which meant Star and her mother–were hardly conventional and it would take a strong man to love them. In the same way, she knew that her friends would not all have the joy and happiness they expected in their lives, because not everybody could. It was obvious. To imagine anything else was folly.

Though, Star, like her mother, couldn’t actually predict what would happen in the world, she had enough wisdom to understand the rules of the universe. While her friends threw themselves blindly into everything and were surprised when the man they’d met at the club hadn’t called, or shocked that other people could be bitchy, Star was never surprised by anything.

As she grew older, Star’s ability with her flowers and her garden grew. Talking to her plants wasn’t the whole trick: caring for them with reverence was and Star did that, plucking weeds from around the orange-petalled Fire Dragon so it could breathe again, moving the old redcurrant bush away from the dry soil beside the shed, pausing occasionally in her labours to listen. For Star loved music. She never grew tired of hearing the distant singing of the church choir, even though she had never set foot in the building–this was another thing that set her apart from her friends. Star’s church was the trees and the mountains and the mighty roar of the sea. And although she loved church music, she loved the music of nature better. The song of the bees was, her mother had taught her, the Earth’s song. Melodic and magnetic, with the bees moving to some ancient dance they’d moved to long before man came calling. And was there anything more uplifting than the sound of pigeons under the eaves, skittering about and squabbling as they sheltered from the rain?

It was raining now. As Star lay in bed, she could hear the raindrops bouncing off the window panes. As usual, she had woken at six a.m.; in summer, she would have risen immediately to make the most of the golden sunrise, but on this cold February morning, dawn was at least two hours away–and it promised to be a murky one.

Danu and Bridget, her two cats, stretched on the bed beside her, making their morning noises. Bridget was a showy white ball of fluff, her magnificent fur requiring lots of brushing. Danu, the smaller of the two, was a rescued tabby who’d been given to Star the year before, the moment exactly right because Moppy, Bridget’s sister, had just died. Life had an odd way of doing that, Star knew: giving you what you needed when you needed it. Not wanted–your want didn’t come into it. Want and need were very different things.

Star lay in bed for a while, stroking the two cats, and staring out of her window at the dark shapes of the trees and shrubs in her garden. She could see the red maple tree she’d planted when she was twenty and lost in love.

‘Plant something to remind you of this,’ her mother had said, and Star had been surprised.

‘I’ll always remember,’ she’d said simply.

Everyone said she was at the peak of her beauty then, lush like her mother’s precious peonies, full-lipped, and with hair of spun gold–the Bluestone women always had golden hair, no matter what their fathers looked like–that fell about her slender waist. She’d secretly picked out her wedding dress with her best friend, Trish, and she knew that Danny and she would be so happy if they rented the house on the hill road. From there they could see the town and the sea, and he could be at his father’s garage, where he was one of the mechanics, in five minutes.

Still, she had liked the idea of a tree for them both and planted the red maple.

But, ‘I’m too young to settle down,’ Danny had told her not long after the tree was planted, when its roots had barely had time to unfurl into the earth and Star was still patting it each morning with joy at all it represented.

‘That’s not what you said before,’ Star replied, knowing in a painful instant that the wedding dress, a jewel she’d mistakenly thought was meant for her, would remain on the rail in Brenda’s Boutique.

‘It’s my mother,’ Danny said reluctantly. ‘It’s about the business, too. She said–’

‘She said you needed a better wife if you want to expand the garage. She said she didn’t want you marrying one of those atheist Bluestone women with their strange herbs and their unnatural hair.’

Star wasn’t bitter towards Danny. It wasn’t his fault. She should have known that he wasn’t a strong enough man to turn the tide of public opinion. Even in the mid seventies, when the rest of the Western world seemed to be enjoying free love and the Pill, the more conservative parts of Ardagh ate fish on Fridays, blessed themselves when they passed the church and remained unsure of the Bluestones.

Old Father Hely, the parish priest, and Sister Anne, headmistress of the Immaculate Mother of God Convent, had both been remarkably understanding about Eliza’s preference for her daughter not to practise the Catholic traditions. Learn them, yes. Eliza was all for learning and tolerance. She was fascinated by all religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, everything out there. But not practise. Eliza saw the central truth in the world around her, a world that had been there longer than any man-made religion.

‘We’ll take care of Star in school,’ Sister Anne said firmly. ‘You might not come to our church, but you understand Christianity, Eliza. I know how kind you are to those who need it. There are plenty here in town who trot along to Mass every day and still don’t love their neighbour,’ she added grimly.

‘Indeed, you’re right, Sister Anne. Nobody in this parish will ever hear me say a word against you,’ agreed Father Hely, who’d studied too much Christian history, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, to be doctrinaire when it came to unusual Eliza Bluestone with her earthly wisdom and her home-made elderflower wine.

However, not everyone in Ardagh agreed with Father Hely and Sister Anne, and many of the people who went to Sunday Mass and hung holy water fonts inside their front doors disliked the Bluestones because they were different. And clearly Danny’s mother fell into this category. Star hadn’t realised before quite how strong this dislike was. She herself didn’t care what or whom anyone worshipped and was astonished that other people could object to her views.

‘You’ll always have your tree,’ Eliza told Star the night Danny broke the news there would be no wedding. Mother and daughter sat in the hand-hewn walnut love-seat in their garden that overlooked the sea, and sipped rosehip tea.

Star gazed gloomily at the tree. And then looked around at all the other trees in the five-acre plot. The house, a higgledy-piggledy concoction of white clapboard with slanting roofs and an oriel window, was surrounded by trees: smooth-skinned, tall ashes, swooping willows, a graceful plane tree, a crowd of copper beeches by the vegetable garden, and another sharp-leafed maple that turned blood red in the autumn.

‘We have lots of trees,’ she said, suddenly understanding. She got up to touch the other maple. ‘You once said this was my dad’s tree?’

Star’s father had been the sort of man who preferred travelling to settling down. India was his favourite place in the whole world, especially the beaches of Goa, where a man could lie in the sun and not have to think about anything except what the human race was for and other philosophical questions.

‘I loved your father,’ Eliza said.

‘But he left?’

‘I planted the tree when we were in love,’ Eliza answered.

‘Then he left.’ Star got it. ‘What about the other trees?’ she asked, wondering how they’d never discussed this before. But then, her mother was a gentle and slow teacher: the lesson came when the lesson came, it would never be forced.

‘Two more I planted, both before you were born, before I met your father.’

Three loves.

‘And all these other trees?’ Star gestured.

‘My mother’s, her mother’s, all the Bluestone women have planted trees for as long as we’ve lived here.’

Star laughed then and ran around the garden, touching her hands to the bark of each of the precious trees. She loved this link with her female ancestors. It was like holding hands with all of them, listening to them laugh and talk, strong women who’d seen so much.

The trees, plants and flowers of her wild garden that gave such comfort to Star eventually provided the raw material for her livelihood. She designed and made tapestries embroidered and appliquéd with wools and silks hand-dyed from natural dyes. Star’s eye for nature meant her pictures were landscapes of hills and woodland glades, sometimes with a brightly plumaged bird peering out from the undergrowth, or a blossoming creamy magnolia positioned against a backdrop of verdant green, even the misty shape of a unicorn in the distance. For many years, she had sold her work in a tiny craft shop on the outskirts of Wicklow town and just about made a living out of it. Then someone had brought one of her tapestries to the attention of a buyer in Kenny’s department store in Ardagh.

Kenny’s were always on the lookout for new talent, the woman said, and Star’s exquisite artisan works would complement their homes department perfectly. The store didn’t deal in paintings: too complicated and time-consuming, but the Bluestone Tapestries were exactly what they were looking for. Within six months, Star’s tiny business had become a thriving cottage industry. That was five years ago. She had three employees now and they’d been working flat-out to complete their latest order for Kenny’s, which was where Star was bound that morning.

There were twenty hangings of all sizes ready in their moss-green tissue paper. She was dying to see what Lena, the buyer and one of the store’s directors, would think of her new departure, a large mermaid tapestry. Star hadn’t worked on many sea pictures before: the pigments were hard to make. It was easy to mix up rich loden greens and dusty ochres, but the pure blues and aquas for sea pictures had been more difficult. When she’d got into sea tapestries, she’d finally begun using hand-made dyes bought from artisans, although she still used the heads of pure blue hydrangeas to make rich blues, and her blackberries summoned up an inky purple that spoke of the ocean depths. Star had been in two minds about selling the mermaid tapestry at all. It would have looked so perfect on the wall in the kitchen, under the rail where the copper pots hung. But she’d hardened her heart and packed it up. The Bluestone Mermaid, with her foamy sea-green eyes and skeins of pale hair, needed to be out spinning her magic on someone else’s wall.

Star fed the cats, then made herself breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and stewed a cup of mint tea which she drank in the tiny conservatory. Breakfast over, she dressed. Her toilette never took long: she would shower, brush hair that was still as blonde as it ever had been, albeit with many strands of white, and apply a little kohl on her dark eyes. It was an unusual combination: pale hair, olive skin and dark eyes. Her old friend Trish, whom she sometimes bumped into in the supermarket, had grown round, and always wanted to know how Star remained as slim as ever.

‘It’s nothing I’m doing,’ Star would say. ‘My mother was the same, you remember.’

Trish nodded, remembering. And Star could almost read Trish’s next thought, which was that three children made a person put on weight, and Star, after all, had no children, and no grandchildren, and what was the point of being slim and sixty if you hadn’t the pleasure of a family?

Star would have loved to have children: the feel of a small, trusting hand in hers, a little girl of her own to sit with in the walnut love-seat and teach to plant trees. But that hadn’t been her path. She’d been given the gift of creating works of beauty, and the gift of making plants grow. Once, it might not have been enough. Now it was.

Besides, the women she’d helped in her life were almost like children to her. Star’s talent for collecting lost souls had given her mothering instinct a powerful outlet.

She dressed with speed, her clothes the colours of the garden she loved: pastels in spring, warm rosy hues in summer, golds when the leaves were turning in autumn, and the cool shades of a snowy landscape in winter. Today, it being February, she dressed in a cream woollen dress with a grey fitted coat and black high boots. She swept her hair up off her face and fastened it in a low knot at the base of her neck. Her everyday uniform was very different, loose skirts or jeans and T-shirts, but today, she needed to appear the smart businesswoman.

Kenny’s department store was an institution. The word had become a cliché, but Kenny’s truly was one. Established in 1924, when Europe was recovering from the Great War and Ireland was emerging on to the world stage, after the ravages of the Civil War, Kenny’s became the local byword for style. It was the place where all were welcomed, the moneyed classes and those who hoped one day to belong to the moneyed classes. Old Mr Kenny’s dictum was that every customer was to be treated with courtesy, working man and titled lady alike. Its combination of elegance and egalitarianism contributed to its success.

Over the years, so much of Ardagh had changed: entire streets had been transformed as old family businesses made way for high street chains and big conglomerates. The Classic Cinema, where Star and her friends had eaten popcorn and screamed their way through Jaws, was now a car park, and the Soda Pop where they’d drunk cheap coffee and occasionally had enough money to indulge in the house speciality–a banana split–had been demolished and a supermarket built in its place.

But Kenny’s never changed. It had been updated, with plenty of money spent, but the place looked and felt essentially the same: a graceful old-style Edwardian shop front that took up an entire block, with glossy small-paned windows and swing doors ornamented with shining brass fittings. A curlicued sign hung over every door: Kenny’s–Established 1924.

Star left her car in the car park behind Kenny’s, walked around to the delivery door at the back and pressed the bell. It was over an hour to opening, and most of the staff wouldn’t have arrived yet, but Lena had promised to be at the delivery door at eight. The door buzzed and Star pushed it open, pulling the small wheelie trolley, with its precious cargo of tapestries, behind her. The place was dark and there was nobody visible, so Star wasn’t sure who’d buzzed her in, but she began to walk in the direction of the back stairs to the offices, looking around for signs of life. The doors to the stairs were locked when she tried them. The only bit of light was coming from the double doors that led on to the shop floor. Perhaps that’s where Lena was.

Star pushed open the doors and breathed in the magical scent of Kenny’s.

After the gloom of the delivery area, it was like entering a beautifully lit jewel box. In the distance, she could hear the faint drone of a vacuum cleaner. The lights were on in the shop and the scents of perfume mingled with the smell of furniture polish and a faint hint of warm pastries wafting down from the café upstairs. She left her trolley against a wall and began to walk through this paradise, enjoying the sensation of being there all on her own.

Lena often chatted about the various departments. How David Kenny, the current owner, had said he wanted a very distinctive jewellery area, with unusual pieces from local craftsmen and women as well as the big brands. It was the same in the fashion department: there was a small section where young, just-out-of-college designers could display their clothes. The perfume and cosmetics halls, the most valuable space per square metre in any department store, were filled with all the usual brands, but pride of place went to Organic Belle, a range of skin products made entirely in a small village in West Cork.

‘David has a great eye for the next big thing,’ Lena confided. ‘Nobody had heard of Organic Belle when he brought them in two years ago; now they’re big in Los Angeles and some famous hotel chain wants the range in all their spas. They’re going to be huge. You should try the products. We’ve a lovely woman who works there, Charlie Fallon. She could help you.’

Star sensed that Lena thought she was the epitome of an eccentric artist, partly because she lived in such a remote spot, and partly because Star had said she rarely visited Kenny’s. Lena, who lived and breathed the store, and didn’t see how anyone else could fail to adore the place, was shocked.

‘You mean, you don’t shop there?’

‘I was there twice last year,’ Star pointed out.

‘But that was to see me,’ Lena said.

Consequently, she did her best to sell the notion of Kenny’s to Star, highlighting bits she thought Star might like, which included anything vaguely natural.

Passing the Organic Belle counters, Star inhaled the subtle scent of the brand’s best-selling balm: an instantly relaxing combination of lemongrass and lavender.

Star had seen Charlie, the woman Lena had spoken of, on one of her earlier visits. Although she didn’t exactly resemble her mother, Star was pretty sure that Charlie was the younger daughter of Kitty Nelson, a stalwart of the women’s feminist movement in the seventies and someone Star had known many years ago. It was the eyes: ever so slightly cat-shaped. But while Kitty’s eyes had been feline in every respect, particularly when it came to men, Charlie’s were soft and gentle. She would be a very different sort of woman to her feisty, femme fatale mother, Star instinctively felt.

Beyond the Organic Belle counters, lay the entrance to the food hall, and even though all the boxes of sweets and cookies were packed away, the lingering aroma of caramel and butter filled the air.

‘I love the food hall,’ Lena had explained, determined to make Star into a Kenny’s fan. ‘We sell proper food there. David realised there was a vast market for ready-to-eat gourmet food and since we’ve started selling the locally produced “I Made It Myself, Honest” range, sales have been enormous.’ People loved the food, Lena went on: simple produce expertly cooked with zero additives.

On her previous visits, Star had been into the homes department, which sold Irish pottery and glass. Star could never resist pottery, but she hadn’t been into the lingerie department, despite Lena explaining about their biggest seller: a range made by a former home economics teacher from Dublin who was fed up with trying to get comfortable suck-it-all-in underwear for women over size 18, and had designed her own range.

‘Fabulous idea,’ said Lena. ‘She made it all on her sewing machine, but when she went round the shops trying to get business, David was the only one to bite. And now look at it. We can’t keep it on the shelves and all the big stores in London want it too. What other man would see that there was a need for that?’ Lena asked.

Star smiled. Lena would have died with embarrassment if she’d thought she was implying that slender Star needed control pants.

‘And it’s not as if he has any experience with a wife at home looking for control pants every time she needs to dress up,’ Lena went on. ‘He’s married to Ingrid Fitzgerald, for heaven’s sake–she’s only a size 12. Has an incredible figure. So it’s pure business sense on his part. You have to admire that, don’t you?’

Star rarely watched television. She had one, but it was ancient and she really only turned on for the news. Even so, she knew who Ingrid Fitzgerald was. In a world where many political television interviewers were male, Ingrid stood out as the best of them all: highly intelligent, poised and adept at getting answers to the hard questions. And beautiful, too. Not the fleeting type of beauty that came from fluffed-up hair and a carapace of make-up, but a real, deep-down kind–lovely bone structure, intelligent eyes and an expressive, warm face.

And the thing was, Ingrid looked as if she was as lovely inside as she was out. Star had always been a very good judge of that. They were similar in age too, although Ingrid might be younger, Star thought. In another world, they might have been friends. Ingrid had two children, grown-up now, and her daughter, Molly, shared a flat with a girl Star had known when she was just a baby. Natalie was twenty-three now: Star kept count.

Natalie had nearly been born in Star’s house, and Star would never forget the frantic dash to hospital with Des, while Dara lay on the backseat howling in pain. Star had been one of the first people to hold the tiny baby with the head of curly dark hair and she’d felt what she always felt when she held a newborn–that they knew all the wisdom of the world.

Star had been part of Natalie’s world for little more than three years before Dara had died. Star, like everyone else in Dara’s circle of friends, had sworn to abide by Dara’s rules about her little daughter.

‘Let me go, don’t try to hold on to the past,’ Dara had insisted, fearing that the memory of her dead mother would darken Natalie’s future.

‘She deserves to know who you are,’ Star had pleaded. ‘Were,’ she amended sadly.

Dara had shaken her head fiercely. ‘It’s better this way,’ she said. The past could destroy people, and she didn’t want that for Natalie. What she wanted for her daughter was a new life with her father. ‘Des is wonderful, he’ll bring her up so well. Perhaps he’ll marry again, and they’ll be much happier without me like a spectre in the background.’

And so everyone who loved Dara had promised her that they wouldn’t be a part of little Natalie’s world, telling her how like her mother she was or recounting tales of the days before she was born. Though Star had only known Dara a few years–since that rainy day she’d found her lying in utter despair on the coast road–she was one of the few people who’d heard the heartbreaking story of Dara’s earlier life.

‘The past hurts,’ said Dara, determined to spare her beloved daughter the pain.

‘But knowing can bring about healing,’ Star replied. ‘You can transcend the misery: you have.’

But Dara was firm. For Star, who lived on instinct, staying out of Natalie’s life as she grew up had been one of the hardest vows she’d ever kept.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the double doors on to the street swinging shut. A blast of icy February air whirled in, along with a man in a long grey overcoat, the collar turned up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he walked at speed, as if there wasn’t enough time to do all he wanted in life.

From her position beside a display of jewelled clips and silk-flower hairclips, Star watched David Kenny pass though his department store. He didn’t survey his surroundings the way she imagined he normally did, those clever eyes noting every detail and marking it down in his memory if something needed to be changed. His eyes were focused on something else entirely, something inward. The closer he got, the more she could see the tension in his face. His hair was greying, salt and pepper around the temples. Distinguished, Star thought; that was the word for it. He reached the stationary escalator in the centre of the store and instead of climbing up, showing how fit he undoubtedly was, he jabbed a red button. The escalator hummed to life and he stood in perfect stillness as it bore him up to the next floor.

Star had heard that David Kenny, like his father before him, made a practice of walking through his beloved store every day, making sure all was well. All might have been well in the store this morning, but watching him now, Star was certain that all was not well with David Kenny.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Only someone who knew him well could detect the strain on his carefully composed face. Once, she’d known David Kenny better than she’d known any other human being. Now, the closest she got to him was when she reached a hand out in her garden and touched his tree, a rowan that had grown tall and strong in the thirty-five years since she’d planted it. She hadn’t talked to him since then, though she was sure he was well aware that she was Bluestone Tapestries. Lena’s initial attempt to arrange an introduction had been gently brushed away, with Star explaining that she ‘didn’t do corporate stuff’.

‘Oh, but David meets everyone,’ Lena said.

‘Not me,’ Star replied, smiling to show that she was happier that way. And she was grateful that David appeared to accept this, for he had made no attempt to meet her.

It wasn’t that she was angry with David. No. It hadn’t ended that way at all. It just wasn’t meant to be for her and the passionate young poet who’d written verses to her beauty, and made love to her as if he’d found his life’s meaning when their bodies were together. No, she wasn’t angry with him. Her life had worked out in its own way. Until now, she’d imagined David’s had too.

But seeing how tense he looked, she wasn’t so sure.

An old saying of her mother’s came to mind: ‘What’s meant for you will find you.’ Many people took that to mean good things, but Star was enough of a student of the universe to know that it could mean bad things too.

Whatever terrible sadness was touching David, Star hoped he was able to deal with it.

1

Be kind to other women. It really works–most of the time. And even on those days when it doesn’t, it’ll make you feel better inside.

That night, Ingrid sat at the beautifully laid dinner table in a grand old house, with her husband David and eleven other elegantly dressed couples, and wished with all her heart that she wasn’t there. The scent of the freesias in the crystal bowl in the centre of the table fought valiantly with the women’s perfumes, which were predominantly musky with the odd note of sharp florals. Ingrid loved scent, but she hated the heavy, cloying perfumes so many women wore at night, as if they were using pheromones to attract a caveman rather than attending a civilised dinner party with their husbands.

She reached across the snowy white tablecloth and pulled the bowl closer to her, leaning forward to smell the pure, clean flowers. Instantly, she was transported to her terrace on a late spring day, where she would sit revelling in the seclusion as she read the morning papers. Pity she wasn’t there now. Stop, she told herself. The evening wasn’t going to grow magically shorter by wishing it was over.

The problem was that these people were David’s friends. Odd how a couple could be married for thirty years and still have such disparate friends. They shared some, people they’d known all their married life, but their careers had brought them a collection of acquaintances from two completely different worlds.

Tonight was a night for David’s people, in particular their host, the owner of a large transport company, useful to Kenny’s. Three other businessmen whom David knew were also present: wealthy men with glamorous wives; women with beautiful hair and nails and wearing diamonds of every possible cut.

Looking around the table, Ingrid decided that the dinner party was entirely made up of successful men and their wives. There were no business women; Ingrid could spot them from fifty paces, for no matter how successful they were, they were never quite as polished as the wives of alpha men. Years interviewing the great and the good on Politics Tonight had taught her that it was rare for an alpha man to form a lasting relationship with a woman who had as much power as he did. People were probably amazed that she and David had stuck together; most men would have been uncomfortable sharing the limelight with a woman who made her living grilling politicians on live TV. But then, David wasn’t most men. He was, Ingrid thought, smiling across the table at him, special.

He caught her eye and smiled back, and she thought how well he looked in his grey suit and pale pink shirt. She knew he was tired because of the lines around his eyes, but nobody else would pick up on that. They’d see the usual handsome, charming David Kenny, the man who’d inherited the family firm and taken it on to a whole new level. In the same way, nobody looking at Ingrid would see a woman with a mild headache who didn’t want to be here. They’d see what she wanted them to see: a woman who’d pulled out all the stops with hair and make-up, yet remained modest in the diamond department. Ingrid felt that knuckle-duster rings were like push-up bras: you either liked them or you didn’t.

The only interesting thing about nights out schmoozing David’s business acquaintances was that Ingrid ceased to be Ingrid Fitzgerald, the television personality who’d kept her maiden name from her days as a radio producer; she was Ingrid Kenny, David’s wife. And sometimes, just sometimes, that made her deliciously invisible. Like now.

The man seated on her left turned to talk to her.

‘You’re Mrs Kenny, aren’t you?’ he said. He was sixty something, balding, with a weathered complexion that spoke of many hours spent outdoors, probably on the sea, Ingrid decided. His outfit, a blue blazer with gold buttons, had a hint of ‘Commodore of the Yacht Club’ about it.

‘Yes,’ said Ingrid gently, sensing that he had no idea who she was professionally. ‘I’m Ingrid, David’s wife.’

‘Marvellous business,’ the Commodore said, grabbing his glass of red wine. ‘Kenny’s–what a store. I don’t suppose you have time to be involved yourself, do you? I know what you ladies are like; so many other things to do, charities, committees…’ He smiled at her benignly. ‘My wife, Elizabeth–that’s her over there in the red–she’s on four committees. I don’t know where she finds the time.’

Elizabeth was a steely-eyed brunette, who was expertly made-up and wore an exotic beaded creation. She was watching Ingrid and her husband with interest. Ingrid reckoned that Elizabeth recognised her from the television and was just as sure that Elizabeth knew the poor old Commodore wouldn’t.

‘Well, I am involved in some charities,’ Ingrid said to her neighbour. She was a patron of an AIDS charity, on the board of a domestic abuse, and regularly hosted charity balls. ‘But I don’t have that much time, because I work too.’

‘Oh, really,’ said her neighbour airily, as if the notion of a woman working was highly eccentric and would never catch on. ‘And what is it you do?’

It was moments like these that Ingrid stored up to tell her friend, Marcella, whenever Marcella claimed that everyone and their lawyer knew who Ingrid was.

‘You’ve such a recognisable face,’ Marcella insisted.

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Ingrid replied. ‘Famous is for film stars and singers, not people like me. People recognise me, they just don’t know where from. They think they must have seen me in the supermarket or something.’

The downside of her being on television a lot was going into Marks & Spencer’s and nipping up to the underwear department to find several people watching her with fascination as she searched among the briefs, trying to find a five-pack of knickers that suited her.

Anyway, here was this sweet man who clearly had no idea who she was and it was quite nice, although difficult to explain what she did without making it sound as if she was big-headed about it. She knew that some people in her position might have fixed him with a grim glare and told him she was one of the highest paid broadcasters in the State and could make politicians whimper for their mummies. But Ingrid preferred a low-key approach.

‘I work in television,’ she said simply.

‘Oh really! Interesting. My daughter worked in television for a while, researching stuff. It was a terrible job, awful pay and, goodness, there was no hope of really climbing the ladder. Only a few seem to make it,’ he went on.

‘Yes,’ echoed Ingrid, ‘only a few do seem to make it.’

Ingrid thought of her years climbing the television ladder. It had been challenging at times, but she hadn’t had to stiletto anyone in the groin to make it to the top–a fact that many people, interviewing her these days for newspaper profiles, found incredible.

‘It must be so much tougher for a woman,’ they said, eager to hear about glass ceilings, male-dominated power structures and male broadcasters bitching about her as they got subtly patted with Mac Face & Body in make-up.

‘The media–this part of it, anyway–is one of the few areas where women can do well easily,’ Ingrid would explain. But nobody appeared to believe that her own calm self-confidence and native intelligence had made it work.

‘What about you,’ she said politely to the Commodore, ‘what do you do?’

It was all the encouragement the Commodore needed. He was soon explaining the difference between a yacht and a boat, and Ingrid let her attention wander. Across the table, her husband seemed to be enjoying himself talking to a lovely woman who’d been introduced to her earlier as Laura.

She liked watching David. He was charming to everyone, not in a false way but in a way that said he was interested in other people. His father had been the same: always ready to talk to everyone in the store, from the cleaners to the general manager.

OK? David mouthed at her across the table.

Ingrid nodded imperceptibly. She was fine.

‘Sorry, you got stuck with Erskine,’ he said three hours later in the back of the taxi on their way home. He put his hand in hers and held it tightly, as they both sat back after what had turned out to be an incredibly heavy meal. Double cream with everything. Ingrid’s insides yearned for Pepto-Bismol.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was quite nice really, but I’m now an expert on boats and if I ever need to interview anyone on the subject, Erskine is the man I will ask.’

David laughed. He had a great laugh, rich and deep, the sort that made everyone else want to join in. Out of the corner of her eye, Ingrid could see the taxi driver grin as well. They were undoubtedly the sort of customers the driver liked: polite, sedate, middle-aged people being picked up from one beautiful suburban house and whisked off to another, with no chance of anyone throwing up in the back of the cab or not having the money to pay him.

‘Erskine probably didn’t have a clue who you were, did he?’ David asked perceptively.

‘Not the foggiest,’ Ingrid said. ‘I may have left him with the impression that I made the tea in the television studios.’

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that!’ David laughed. ‘That’s cruel. I bet his wife knew, all right. She’s probably telling him the truth right now.’

‘No, it’s not cruel,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was terribly sweet and everything, but you know, he does live on this planet, he should be interested in politics.’

‘I’m quite sure he is interested in politics, darling,’ David replied mildly, ‘but not everyone watches television.’

It was an idea that Ingrid had heard many times before, but one that she could never quite grasp. She was of the opinion that people should know what was going on in the world, and television news and debate was an inherent part of that.

‘I’d say old Erskine sits at home reading copies of Yachting Man and books about naval battles from three hundred years ago,’ said David. ‘Happy in his own world. And why not?’

Ingrid shrugged. She and David would never agree on this one. He was able to forgive people for not wanting to read four newspapers a day, she wasn’t.

‘You were lucky,’ she said now, ‘sitting beside that gorgeous Laura person.’

‘She was a sweetheart,’ David said. ‘Although she did spend a fair proportion of the evening telling me about her daughter, who’d love to get some experience in the store and has lots of marvellous ideas for fashion design.’

‘God no,’ groaned Ingrid, ‘not another one of those.’

When she went to media parties, she was forever being cornered by people desperately pitching their CVs or their sons’ or daughters’ CVs in the hope of breaking into television via a personal introduction from the powerful and famous Ingrid Fitzgerald. When David went to parties, people told him about sons and daughters who were clothes designers or who had created a range of pottery that Kenny’s couldn’t afford to be without.

‘Did she sound OK?’ Ingrid asked.

‘She sounded very promising,’ David said. ‘I told her to send the CV to Stacey.’

Stacey O’Shaughnessy was his executive assistant. A wonderfully kind person who ran his office life as expertly as Ingrid ran his home life.

‘You’re a terrible old softie, do you know that, David Kenny?’ Ingrid said.

‘Right back at you,’ he said. ‘You could have flattened poor old Erskine by telling him exactly who you were, but you didn’t, did you?’

‘No,’ Ingrid said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I was mean to the Erskines of this world, even though I disapprove of their ignorance.’

‘I’ll tell that to the Minister for Defence,’ murmured David.

‘Erskine is an old duffer who obviously inherited money and never had to do more than put on an old school tie to get on in the world. The Minister for Defence is a highly paid public representative who should know better than to write character references for a man on trial for rape, just because the accused’s parents happen to live in his constituency. There’s a difference,’ Ingrid said. She could feel herself getting heated again, the way she had before the programme in question. Ingrid never lost it on the show: then, she was coolness personified. She used her passion for her preparation, when she worked out how to phrase her questions in such a way her subject couldn’t avoid answering.

‘True. You were right to nail him,’ David said. ‘He deserved it.’

‘Yes, he did,’ Ingrid sighed, the flare of anger gone. At least David understood why she did what she did. She couldn’t bear injustice. The idea that a government minister’s character reference could hinder the conviction of a rapist incensed her. David knew her so well, he understood her crusading spirit.

‘Just here is fine, beside those big gates,’ David said to the taxi driver.

They got out and Ingrid found her keys in her handbag while David paid the driver. She was delighted to be home on the early side. It wasn’t even twelve yet. With luck, she’d be asleep before one and get up late the following morning; maybe the two of them could sitting in the conservatory with some coffee, reading the Saturday papers. She had just keyed the security number into the side gate when David joined her.

‘Lie-in tomorrow?’ she said, as they walked up the path to the house.

‘Sorry, afraid not,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to go into the office for a couple of hours. I’ve an absolute ton of work on.’

‘Oh, David,’ she said, ‘you live in the bloody place.’ The words were out before she could stop them. Ingrid hated sounding whingey. Her own job could be all-consuming at times and if anyone understood how work could claim a person, she did.

‘Just for a few hours,’ he said, ‘all right? I’ll be back by two; three at the latest.’

‘OK,’ she said and squeezed his hand. ‘Sunday morning lie-in?’

‘Promise,’ he replied.

‘I’m holding you to that. I have my needs, you know,’ she added in a teasing voice.

‘I know all your needs, Ingrid Kenny,’ he said, ‘and wouldn’t the public love to, too!’ His voice trailed off mischievously.

The dogs greeted them as they opened the front door. While David went to switch off the alarm, Ingrid got down on her knees to pet them. ‘Hello, darlings,’ she said, ‘sorry we were out, but we’re back now.’

Somewhere in the back of her mind was the awareness that David hadn’t reacted in the way he normally did to her flirtatious reference to needs: once, he’d have grabbed her by the hand and taken her upstairs to bed. Instead, he’d made a joke about it.

He was tired, she told herself. She was too. She was so used to reading nuance into every sentence for work: it wasn’t fair to do it to poor David.

The duty dinner done, the weekend stretched ahead of her. She had no work, no functions to attend, no charity events, it would be one long, glorious rest and she was looking forward to it. Molly, their daughter, was coming for lunch on Sunday, which would be wonderful. If only Ethan was coming too…Ingrid felt the magnetic pull of her laptop in the study. She could just nip in and see if Ethan had emailed her from Vietnam, which was where he and the gang were now. But if he hadn’t emailed, that would make it four days since his last contact, and Ingrid found that, after three days, she went into a kind of slow panic if she hadn’t heard anything. No, she’d go to bed. If he hadn’t emailed, she wouldn’t sleep for worrying. Though even if he hadn’t emailed, it didn’t mean anything bad had happened, did it?

Ingrid woke alone the following morning, star-fished in their huge bed. Her hands reached over to David’s pillow and found nothing. He must have gone to the store, she thought drowsily, and wriggled further under the covers to doze again. The sheets felt warm, the bed was soft. She felt in the bed, her limbs a part of it. If she kept her eyes closed and allowed her mind to drift, she’d be asleep again.

After about five minutes, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Her mental database had started up. Ingrid often wished there was some system whereby she could plug a USB cable into her head and connect it directly to the computer, so that all the stuff that rattled around in her mind could be magically transferred to her laptop hard drive instead. She could compose entire emails in her head, write letters, draft speeches, imagine exactly what she’d say to the opposition health spokesperson on the programme that night, all while lying in bed at five o’clock in the morning. Some of her best work was done in that perfect stillness of the pre-dawn. She’d once been asked to take part in a feature for a magazine about career women’s hints for success. She’d said the normal stuff everyone else did: about making lists and trying to be organised, doing grocery shopping on-line, catching up on phone calls on her phone headset in traffic…She did all those things, but she’d never mentioned the early-morning mental download. It sounded too manic, as if she was constantly switched on. But then, she was–her mind racing, scanning ideas, deleting them, speeding on to the next one. Like now.

Fighting it never worked. It was better to go with the flow. She needed to take the cream dress with the caramel beading on it to the dry cleaners, because she was going to need it for the Domestic Abuse Association’s dinner at which she was the guest speaker on Thursday night. It was a good dress, always worked; it didn’t matter whether she had put on a few pounds or not. Which reminded her, she hadn’t been to the gym all week and she needed two workouts and a swim to keep that awful middle-aged spread at bay. Ethan might have emailed. She sent a silent prayer that he had. Please God, please keep him safe.

She had to reply to the latest batch of emails from people looking for a start in the TV industry. She loved helping people, but sometimes she got so many emails that it was impossible to deal with them all. She liked to answer those ones herself, they weren’t something she could hand over to her personal assistant, Gloria. Gloria was wonderfully efficient, handled Ingrid’s diary and organised all the reams of research she needed for her job, but Ingrid preferred writing a lot of her letters herself. No journalist could let someone else write for them. Hell, that was another thing, she’d been asked to be a patron of a journalism course.

Ingrid had never attended a journalism course. She had come into the business by a rather circuitous route: after her politics degree she got her start in radio, working behind the scenes as a researcher, and then producing, before moving into television news and from there, taking the totally unexpected giant leap into presenting. She approved of journalism courses and approved of helping people, but there really wasn’t enough time. Her schedule was always hectic, too hectic for all the causes she wanted to support. And even though the children were grown up, she still needed to make time for her family.

Tomorrow, Molly was coming for Sunday dinner. As she lay in bed with her eyes closed, Ingrid smiled. Her darling daughter was the reason the beautiful cream dress needed a trip to the cleaners. Molly had borrowed it for a formal event two months before.

‘Mom, I’m really sorry, I meant to get it dry cleaned, only I knew I’d forget about it and it’d get left there, so I thought I better drop it back to you first and…’ she’d said.

‘It’s fine,’ Ingrid interrupted. ‘Honestly.’

And she meant it. Kind, wonderful Molly was twenty-three and hopeless at things like dry cleaning and having milk in the fridge, but she was a one-woman powerhouse when it came to campaigns to help other human beings. Molly’s ethical work made Ingrid feel like a capitalist pig. Molly was involved in so many causes that it was a miracle she found time to do anything. By day, she was press officer for Fight Poverty, an organisation that worked with disadvantaged children. At night and at weekends, she rattled tins for an animal shelter, and donated her services to a charity that funded a small school in Kenya and hoped to fund two more. She cared about her carbon footprint, cycled everywhere and owned two rescue cats. She didn’t care much about ironing her clothes or eating food before its best-before date. Her mother was endlessly grateful that Molly lived with Natalie, her best friend and a person with organisational skills to rival Madonna’s, otherwise both Molly and the cats would be in their respective hospitals with food poisoning.

If only Ethan, twenty-one and currently on a year-long trip around the world with a group of friends, had one person in his entourage to match Natalie, then Ingrid would sleep so much better at night.

Ethan was usually quite good at emailing home, although most of the time his missives were frustratingly short.

Hi Ma and Pa, having a brilliant time, weather not great but the people are. Don’t worry, we’re all fine. Love Ethan.

Ingrid, who looked at everything in the paper and had the news on practically twenty-four hours a day, could hardly bear to look at any story about twenty-something world travellers any more. When she came across stories about Vietnam and Thailand, she was terrified that she might see something that would spell impending disaster for Ethan. He was travelling with five friends, all big, strong lads, and clever with it, but that didn’t stop her worrying. At twenty-one, they were innocents abroad; a bunch of friendly Irishmen who thought the best of people, and had a smile for anyone. All it would take was for them to turn up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who knew what might happen. No matter how hard she had tried to teach her children a little of her own cynicism, it hadn’t worked. Ingrid could imagine Ethan smilingly helping some sweet girl get on the plane, holding her rucksack to be kind–and he’d be the one caught with whatever drugs she was trying to smuggle. Nobody would believe Ingrid if she told them that her son didn’t do drugs, that he was a good kid, that he’d clearly been duped. She’d be like every other mother who protested her son’s innocence. And they’d say: ‘Of course she believes him, but we know he’s guilty.’

She couldn’t bear it. She had to get up and stop thinking like this.

Even if David had been there, Ingrid wouldn’t have told him about the anxiety. David simply didn’t seem to understand it.

‘Ethan will be fine, you know,’ he’d say, when she let herself go with a stream-of-consciousness rant against what could happen to six hopelessly naïve young guys. No, even worse, what was it David had said the last time?

‘You have to let him go, Ingrid. He’s an adult, not a little boy.’

She felt the rip of rage inside her again, the combination of anger and helplessness at knowing that she couldn’t give her son a quick hug, just for five minutes. That’s all she wanted: to jump on a plane to see him, to touch him, for five minutes, then she’d get back on the plane happy, because she’d know he was OK.

‘I have let him go,’ she hissed at David. ‘But he’s my son, I love him and he’ll always be a part of me, so I’m frightened.’

Then the analytical Ingrid Fitzgerald had taken over, the woman who had interviewed thousands of spin doctors and psychologists over the years, who knew how to skewer an interviewee but who never normally brought her interviewing skills home. ‘Letting go is not what I’m talking about,’ she said coolly. ‘You can let somebody go and still worry about them. I need to be able to share that with you, because if I can’t…well, we shouldn’t be together, should we?’

David had sat up straight then. He’d been lolling on the couch with an after-dinner brandy, idling through one of the many newspapers they had delivered to the house every morning. The sharpness of her words had hit him hard. Something flickered in his eyes: fear, Ingrid thought and she was glad she’d hurt him, glad she’d given him a kick to remind him that he had to work at this relationship too. Then, she’d done something she almost never did: she walked out of the room, because she didn’t want to talk to him any more. She loved David, absolutely. After thirty years of marriage, she still loved him, but she adored her kids. Children were the third point in the eternal love triangle. It’s a pity David didn’t understand that.

He’d apologised and she’d forgiven him, almost. Ingrid didn’t believe in nursing grievances or in letting old arguments take root, but it had been very hard to accept David’s apology without screaming at him that he didn’t understand her at all.

Molly and Ethan might be grown up, but they would always be her children, and when it came to protecting them she would kill with her bare hands if it came to that.

She turned the shower off, wrapped herself in a towel and faced herself in the mirror. She looked tired today, every inch of her fifty-seven years. It took longer in the make-up chair at the studio now to make her look like Ingrid Fitzgerald, longer to make those shrewd grey eyes appear open and alert, especially with that drooping skin above her eyelids. She’d had her skin lasered to reduce fine lines but the next step was an eye lift, something she was putting off. She’d seen too many women who were preternaturally young, and while photographic retouching could make surgery look good in photographs of movie stars, in real life, women could appear strangely wrong, as though their faces were denying the wisdom of the lines they’d earned. Only the best surgeons were able to make people look like themselves but better. Ingrid knew such a surgeon, but she was still scared. Regular Botox was an occupational hazard. She was fundamentally opposed to the very notion of that, too. But she was also a realist who liked her job. Youth had such power. She was lucky–and yes, she knew there was some luck in there–that current affairs was a medium where age was less important than in other television arenas. If her job had been presenting a chat show, she’d have been fired when she turned forty-three. But in her field, age and gravitas were valued among men and women. Yet who knew when that might change? Ingrid accepted the fact that one day, her face would be judged too old for television. All it would take was some focus group led by a twenty-one-year-old hot-shot pronouncing that young viewers switched off in droves at the sight of a post-menopausal woman, and that would be it. Ingrid Fitzgerald’s television career would be summarily over, except for voice-overs on history compilations or an occasional documentary. She was far too shrewd not to know that one day this would happen.

Still, there was nobody here to see her or her wrinkles today. God knew when David would be back. Off with his mistress, she thought, with a hint of bitterness: the store.

Down below, the dogs began to howl. They weren’t allowed upstairs, but when they sensed someone was up and wasn’t rushing down to play with them, they began to whine pitifully.

‘Be down in a minute,’ roared Ingrid. It was nearly ten, so it had been a lie in after all.

When she was ready, she hurried down and sat on the bottom step as the dogs nuzzled into her with frantic delight. ‘Don’t pretend that David didn’t let you out earlier, you little scamp,’ she said affectionately as Lucinda, a golden cocker spaniel, started her desperate-for-a-pee dance. Then Sybil, a black-and-white bitza they’d got from Molly’s dog shelter, began to do the dance too.

Ingrid opened the kitchen’s double doors into the garden and both dogs barely made it out before they sank to their haunches in prolonged peeing sessions.

Ingrid stared, puzzled. They clearly hadn’t been out. The only explanation was that David, up at the crack of dawn, had left without going into the kitchen for breakfast and the dogs hadn’t heard him. Occasionally, if Ingrid woke early, she found the dogs snoring peacefully in their baskets and had the pleasure of seeing them wake and sleepily wag their tails. They were both old and their hearing wasn’t as good as it had once been, rendering them pretty hopeless as guard dogs.

What was David doing, racing off so early on a Saturday that he hadn’t even had time for a coffee or to let the dogs out?

A flutter of disquiet beat in her heart. True, he’d always been obsessed with the store, even more so in the past five years since the expansion.

‘When you borrow that much money, you need to spend more time at work,’ David told her in the months after the store re-opened following its twelve-million-euro revamp, and he was there morning, noon and night. ‘Nobody else can do it but me, Ingrid. I have to be there. You know that.’

Ingrid, who normally felt a certain relief that David was the main shareholder of Kenny’s because she knew of other family-run businesses where there were constant arguments over each mug bought out of petty cash, wished for the first time that he had brothers or sisters to help him.

Money wasn’t the issue. She got a good salary; without a penny of David’s money, they’d have been able to live comfortably. Ingrid had no desire for massive wealth. Lord only knew, most of the people with vast sums of money seemed to have doubled their problems with every year. For every rich person donating money to AIDS research, there were fifty more with kids who refused to work and wanted to do nothing more energetic every day than take cocaine and wrap their Lamborghinis round lamp posts.

Who needed huge wealth? They didn’t.

Surely they were at the point in their life when they could slow down a little, take more time out. She was doing less work these days, why couldn’t David be the same?

With the same disquiet, Ingrid let the dogs back in, fed them their breakfast and took out the coffee to make hers. She felt like phoning David and asking him what was so bloody important that he’d had to rush off at dawn. But that type of conversation never worked. Being a skilled interviewer had taught her that there was never going to be a civil answer to a question couched in such terms.

‘What do you mean, what was so bloody important…’ he’d respond, and they’d be off arguing.

No, far better to say nothing until later and remark kindly that he must be tired after getting up so early, and they could postpone their dinner out that night so he could go to bed early. And then, he’d explain why he’d been up early, and they’d be having a conversation instead of a hostile interrogation. If there was a problem, he’d tell her then. And Ingrid had the strangest feeling in her gut that there was a problem.

She had breakfast watching satellite news, the dogs at her feet hoping for scraps of wholemeal toast and honey.

‘I promise we’ll go for a walk soon,’ she told them.

She normally loved Saturdays when she had no specific place to be; the luxury of knowing that her time was completely her own thrilled her. But today, she felt unsettled and couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. Keeping herself busy, that was the trick. When she’d walked the dogs, she tidied the kitchen with her usual energy, then went into her small study to make a list of emails and letters she had to write. Nothing from Ethan. She did her best to calm the anxiety she felt at no word from him. She worked methodically for an hour, then powered down the computer, ran upstairs and collected everything that needed to be dry cleaned. Finding a jacket of David’s, she sat down for a moment, thinking about him. Between him and Ethan, all she did was worry. No, she must be positive. Ethan was probably having the time of his life. And as for David…Marcella–that was it, she’d ring her best friend, Marcella.

She went down to the hall phone, the one with the preprogrammed numbers on it, and brought up Marcella’s.

It was an unlikely friendship–Ingrid Fitzgerald, whose interviewing technique exposed the inadequacies of the great and the good, and Marcella Schmidt, image guru, whose job was keeping those inadequacies from the public view. Marcella ran her own spin-doctoring company and taught politicians and captains of industry how to talk to the media. If a formerly babbling, foot-in-mouth minister showed up talking sense and wearing a decent suit instead of a shiny one, odds on he’d been given the Schmidt Treatment. And if a big company boss found himself on an industry think tank that covered him with glory, and made people forget that he’d been caught coming out of a lap-dancing club three sheets to the wind with his arms round two lithe dancers, he’d been Schmidt-ed too. Marcella was brilliant at her job and she loved it. That’s why the two women had hit it off, Ingrid knew: shared passion. So what if Ingrid’s job was to find the cracks in the politicians Marcella had Teflon-coated, they worked in the same lions’ den.

Ingrid knew that if she was photographed in flagrante in a hotel room with some glamorous captain of industry, Marcella would be the one she’d turn to. Not that such a thing would ever happen, but still. If shit ever hit Ingrid’s fan, she’d speed-dial Marcella Schmidt.

‘Hi, Marcella, it’s Ingrid,’ she said now when her friend picked up the phone. ‘How’s the luscious Ken Devlin?’ It was their running joke. Latin-looking god Devlin was television’s hottest young talk show host and one of Marcella’s big successes.

‘Can’t get enough of me.’ Marcella sighed as if she was worn out from his amorous attentions.

‘Still?’

‘Still. Wants to have wild sex with me into the middle of next week.’

‘Only next week? What about the week after?’

‘He doesn’t have the stamina for the week after,’ Marcella said with a grin in her voice. ‘Young men–can’t keep up with older women. That would be an interesting opinion piece for the papers: When your sexual peak and his don’t match.’

‘Only if you want to be humiliated forever for being a forty-something woman writing about having sex with a younger man,’ said Ingrid. She saw that Marcella was kidding. ‘You know the rules: male silver fox and younger woman? Totally acceptable, and man gets slapped on the back by all his envious friends. Female silver fox and young man? Collective yeuch and everyone thinks either she’s paying him or he has an Oedipus complex.’

‘Pity,’ sighed Marcella. ‘I need an op ed idea for the Courier Mail.’

‘Personal never works,’ Ingrid said. ‘You should know: you tell people that often enough. Anyway when did you bonk a much younger man? How did that slip past my radar?’

‘Nothing slips past your radar,’ Marcella retorted. ‘Oh, it was years ago. Technically, it probably doesn’t count as I was only thirty-seven and he was thirty-one, and the age issue only counts when you hit forty. Before forty, you have a permit to screw anything you like. After forty, it needs an act of parliament. Besides, it was before I knew you. Just after I divorced Harry.’

The big difference in their lives was personal: Marcella had been married twice in her youth and divorced. The first was rarely mentioned, but she was still friends with her second. Harry was often around: funny, kind, handsome in a rumpled professor sort of way. Ingrid adored him and was curious as to why he and her best friend had divorced, but because it had all happened before she’d met Marcella, it had never been discussed on a forensic level. Marcella merely talked about how she and Harry were too similar for comfortable living conditions. Clever, opinionated men who were used to being in control were great as friends but very annoying as actual husbands.

When Ingrid saw the two of them together at a party, arguing happily over everything from politics to the merits of the latest movies, she wondered if it would have been different if they’d had children together. Kids rubbed off rough edges very quickly. But that had never happened. After Harry, a suitable settling-down man had never come along. Marcella had looked for him, that was for sure. She’d gone to parties, met men at friends’ dinner parties, taken scuba-diving holidays with a lone-travellers group, trekked Peru and made fabulous friends with two men–a gay couple who ran a successful restaurant in Donegal. But the man of her dreams eluded her. Without him, there were no babies with Marcella’s laughing dark eyes and sallow skin. At forty-nine, Marcella fitted so seamlessly into the role of aunt-by-proxy that nobody would ever guess she’d longed for her own children.

Occasionally, the subject came up. Like the time a journalist phoned Marcella with a blithe request for an interview on a piece called ‘childless by choice’.

‘Childless by choice?’ Marcella had hissed that night when she sat in Ingrid’s kitchen and sank a glass of Stellenbosch red, even though it was a weeknight. ‘Who is childless by choice? Very-bloody-few people, that’s who. And if they are, good luck to them. Let them talk to journalists about their decision and how they prefer not to add to the world’s population or how they know parenting’s not for them and decided to be grown up about it. Good luck to them.’ She was hoarse with anger. ‘But most of us aren’t childless by choice. We’re childless by mistake, childless by never finding the right bloody man, and if we do, he’s leaving being a father till he’s made his money and he’s not interested now, honey, and let’s just have fun! Have you thought about Capri for a holiday?’

‘She’s totally insensitive, that reporter,’ Ingrid said, trying to lessen the blow. ‘When we were doing the general election programme, she did an interview with me and asked me was it depressing at my age to work in an industry where women in their fifties were sidelined because their looks had disappeared.’

David, who was cooking at the stove, exploded with laughter.

‘What did you tell her?’ he asked his wife.

‘I gave her my very intense interviewing stare,’ Ingrid replied with a grin, ‘and said it was sad that women were still judged on their appearance, and that the glory of being older and wiser was not worrying so much about the outward face but rather about the person inside.’

Marcella looked up miserably from her glass of wine. ‘So you didn’t tell her we spend ages discussing plastic surgery and that we’d be having facelifts like a shot if only we weren’t so photographed that people would instantly know we’d gone under the knife?’

David laughed uproariously again.

Ingrid joined in, then sighed. ‘I get so sad thinking that I have to have a facelift,’ she said. ‘Botox is one thing.’ Her hand stroked her smooth forehead. ‘But a facelift is so radical and yes, I know I work in television, but it goes against all the things we believe in, Marcella: that women are brilliant and a few lines on your face shouldn’t make you any less brilliant.’

‘I don’t know what I believe in any more,’ Marcella sighed. ‘I used to believe there was someone out there for me and there isn’t. Just me, my job and people asking me how it feels to be a sour old spinster who’s childless by choice.’

‘Believe in that wine,’ David said, refilling her glass.

‘You’re such a lovely man,’ Marcella said. ‘Why don’t you have a brother for me, David? Why didn’t I ever find someone as nice as you?’

Ingrid and David exchanged a worried look. Marcella didn’t get down very often, but when she did, her emotional elevator went down to the basement at warp speed.

‘I’m not as lovely as you think, Marcella,’ David said kindly. ‘I’d drive you mad, wouldn’t I, Ingrid?’

‘Stone mad,’ Ingrid had agreed.

Ingrid wondered now what Marcella would say if she blurted out her concerns about David, that he’d rushed off to work at first light on a Saturday morning leaving her with the feeling that something was wrong, that David was keeping something from her.

Marcella was lightning quick. ‘Is there trouble with the store?’ she’d ask, which was exactly the question rippling through Ingrid’s mind. She decided not to mention her anxiety to her friend. If there was something wrong, David would tell her. It was disloyal to mention her fears before she had anything concrete to be worried about. Perhaps tonight they’d have a chance to talk.

‘What are you up to today?’ Marcella asked.

‘I was about to ask you that,’ Ingrid replied lightly. ‘I’m here on my lonesome as David has rushed off to Kenny’s to make sure it doesn’t all blow up in his absence.’

‘Men, huh?’ Marcella laughed. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t run them over with a truck.’

Ingrid relaxed. Her lightness had worked. Normally, Marcella was so attuned to people’s tone of voice that she could gauge any mental state from a five-second conversation.

‘Do you want to have lunch with me?’ Ingrid asked. ‘I keep hearing about this new brasserie in Dun Laoghaire near the pier. Want to try it?’

‘Beside the fish place? Tonio’s or Tomasio’s or something? Count me in. Meet you in Dun Laoghaire at one?’ Marcella said.

‘Perfect.’

She dropped off the dry cleaning and arrived at the restaurant at exactly the same time as Marcella. Lunch was hugely enjoyable. They generally tried not to talk too much shop. It would have been wrong to discuss which client Marcella was working with because chances were, sooner or later, he or she would end up on one of the navy-blue leather chairs on Ingrid’s set with Ingrid as high inquisitor. They talked politics, policy, and about people.

It wasn’t gossip, Marcella always pointed out. Gossip implied a nastiness about the discussions and there was never nastiness in their talks. They were interested in human nature, that was all. And they met all human life in their work. In the middle of all the policy talks, business meetings and sound bites, were people who worked hard, got passionate about their jobs, made mistakes, made deals, fell in and out of love.

Marcella and Ingrid were fascinated by the people behind the public façades: who had to make a speech in the Dáil chamber after being up all night with a colicky baby but would never mention it, and who’d use every nugget from their personal life for their own gain while not really caring about their family at all. It was no surprise that they both loved The West Wing, but wonderfully, they also both loved Neil Diamond, dancing and clothes.

Marcella had the knack of wearing layers well. Expensive layers. It never worked when they were cheap layers, Marcella explained, because two cheap T-shirts and a little top worn at the same time looked bulky on anybody. Only the flimsiest fine layers that cost the earth and looked as if they’d been boiled for years in a washing machine, hung with the right sort of casual elegance.

Ingrid, who had a more formal style for television and was used to fitted suits for work and elegantly cut jeans and jackets for weekends, envied Marcella’s exquisite wardrobe.

‘It all looks like you just threw it on effortlessly and yet you look fabulous,’ she said in exasperation.

‘Effortless is very hard,’ Marcella responded, looking down at her layered vest-tops, wrap top, and long, slender skirt in varying shades of silver grey. ‘And expensive. Have you any idea how much these little vest-top things cost? I could buy a Fendi handbag with the cash I spent on this outfit.’

‘That’s obscenely expensive,’ said Ingrid, shocked.

Marcella laughed. ‘You sound just like Molly when she was going through her second-hand stage,’ she said.

‘She still is. Mind you, it’s better than spending millions on clothes.’

‘You old Leftie! You’ve only yourself to blame. You and David gave her a social conscience so she wouldn’t be another spoiled brat celebrity child. It’s nice that she prefers to give money to developing countries than to spend it on clothes.’

‘You’re right,’ Ingrid said proudly. ‘There aren’t many people as kind as Molly out there. Although I’d love her to come round to the idea that you can feed the world and wear nice things. Still, she borrowed a dress of mine for a wedding, so perhaps she’s moving out of the all-second-hand stage.’

‘There must be a man on the scene.’

‘No.’ Ingrid was thoughtful. She rather wished there was. Not that she desired her daughter married off for any reasons of propriety, but because she wanted to think Molly was happy being loved the way Ingrid and David loved each other. Love and honest partnership with someone you cared for and respected: what a joy that was.

It was Ingrid and David’s thirty-year anniversary later that year and they’d talked, idly, about a party and a cruise in the Indian Ocean. They were so lucky, Ingrid thought every time she heard of another marriage going belly-up. And luck was involved, no doubt about it. They worked at their marriage for sure, but it had been luck that had brought them together in the first place, two people so instantly compatible.

Lots of break-ups came as no surprise to Ingrid. As a person wildly interested in human behaviour, she couldn’t be shocked when Laurence and Gillian, old friends of hers from college and married twenty-seven years, separated abruptly. The only surprise was that they’d stuck with each other for so long. Laurence was at his happiest sitting in his garden doing the crossword and planning, some day, to mow the lawn. Gillian played badminton competitively, worked full time and was never home.

She and David, on the other hand, were very different in many ways but they complemented each other. She felt a rush of love for him and wished he’d confide in her over whatever was wrong. He might not understand the fierce, feral passion of a mother’s love, but then, could any man? And she loved him with all her heart, no doubt about it.

When she got home at three o’clock David was back and with a small gift: a tub of goose fat from Kenny’s exquisite food hall.

‘For me?’ she asked in amusement, turning it over in her hands. ‘Am I supposed to rub myself in it…?’

‘It’s for the potatoes tomorrow,’ David said, planting a kiss on her cheek. ‘I know, a tub of bath oil would be better, but Molly’s coming for Sunday lunch and you know what she’s like about roast spuds. This is a present for all of us, not just you. Although,’ he was smiling, ‘you can rub yourself with it if you’d like to…’

He seemed in such good humour that Ingrid knew she must have been entirely mistaken to worry about him earlier. She put her present down, grinning. Many women would have thrown the tub at him, but Ingrid had always been realistic about romance. David, despite working in a store overflowing with feminine gifts, had never been the sort of man who came home every week with perfume and flowers. And Ingrid could cope with that: if she wanted flowers, she bought them herself.

‘There’s nothing like goose fat for proper roast potatoes,’ he went on, opening the fridge and poking in it for a snack.

‘Did you not have lunch?’ Ingrid asked.

‘I had brunch,’ he said from the depths of the fridge. ‘I woke up very early and thought I might as well go into work and get it over with, and then Stanley came in with a BLT

and it smelled so good, we all had them. From O’Brien’s Deli–the place is booming since they got that new cook.’

Ingrid relaxed some more. She knew there was an explanation for his early start. She was right not to have said anything to Marcella.

‘You must be tired, darling,’ she said now. ‘We can skip dinner out tonight if you want.’

They’d planned a pizza out, just the two of them in the place down the road.

‘Well…’ he said and he looked a bit shamefaced. ‘We can’t. Jim Fitzgibbon is over from London, he was on to me this morning, and I’d forgotten I’d promised him dinner next time, and he insists it was tonight we set it up for–’

‘Dinner with Jim and Fiona?’ Ingrid gulped. Fiona was a sweetheart but Jim, one of David’s oldest friends, was a property-obsessed bore.

‘Not Fiona, no,’ said David reluctantly. ‘He and Fiona are going through a bad patch. It’s someone else.’

‘Someone else? Are they getting divorced?’

‘I think that might be on the cards. They’ve separated. He’s very cut up about it. Sorry, love, I know it’ll be a pain for you, but I can’t let him down. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I can say you’re not well or…’

‘I’ll come.’

Solidarity was another vital ingredient in a marriage, Ingrid thought. Women’s magazines from years ago used to go on about how romantic gestures were the be all and end all of a relationship, but Ingrid, recipient of a lovely tub of goose grease, knew there was a lot more to it than that. If David wanted to comfort his old friend about the breakdown of his marriage, she’d be there too. She made a mental note to contact Fiona on Monday. There were few things Ingrid hated more than people who cut off one half of a couple after a split.

‘Who’s this woman he’s bringing tonight?’ she asked David in the car on the way to the restaurant.

‘Don’t know,’ he said simply.

‘You’re desperate,’ she said in exasperation. ‘That’s the sort of thing I like to know.’

‘Ah, that’s only people like you and Marcella,’ David replied, ‘people who are obsessed with the world’s private business. The rest of us are quite happy to meander along.’

‘Are we obsessed?’

‘Totally,’ he replied.

Ingrid was wary of what was waiting for them in the restaurant. Jim was bad enough with the lovely Fiona to offset his awfulness, but God alone knew what sort of woman he’d come up with now. Fiona dated back to the time before he had loads of money.

Ingrid loved eating out. She always reckoned that the people who ran restaurants were the people who really knew what was happening in a city. Renaldo’s was one of the country’s premier spots with a Michelin star to its name and a twenty-year reputation for fabulous food and wonderful service.

But tonight she wasn’t in the mood. Two nights with people she didn’t know was two nights too many. At least Molly was coming to lunch the next day, something to keep her sane.

The dinner was interminable. Jim, florid in a red striped shirt and cream jacket, was in show-off mode and Ingrid didn’t know whether he was showing off to his new amour or just showing off in general.

He was back in Dublin for the opening of an apartment complex and within the first ten minutes the entire restaurant must have heard how they’d ‘cleaned up, totally cleaned up. Cost us fifteen million yoyos, and now we’re on the pig’s back. Sold fifty apartments off the plans. On the pig’s back, David, I tell you!! Yeah, you! We’re ready to order the wine. Let’s have some of that Cloudy Bay, the ’99, I think, and a bottle of Dom Perignon to start. That’ll get the party going!’

Jim’s new woman was a showy brunette named Carmel, an unusually normal name for someone who looked as if she’d prefer to be called something exotic like Kiki or Scheherazade. Carmel was in her late thirties, had clearly been Botoxed and Restalyned to within an inch of her life if her relentlessly smooth forehead and big lips were anything to go by, and was heavily spray-tanned from the roots of her sculpted dark hair down to her pedicured designer-sandal-clad feet. She wore vinyl-red lip-gloss, a very expensive dress and spoke in a faux low voice about herself all night.

‘I’d love to work in television,’ she said.

Ingrid tried to smile. Those words had been the death knell for many an evening.

‘I’m very intuitive, you see,’ insisted Carmel before embarking on a monologue that showed her to be far too fascinated by herself to even ask a single question about anyone else.

Ingrid, who was forever finding herself seated alongside dinner guests with narcissistic tendencies, zoned out and merely nodded or murmured yes from time to time. Experience had taught her that it was fatal to attempt any real conversation. People who liked talking about themselves never had any. Easier by far to smile and acquiesce.

Carmel also made several trips to the ladies’ and returned slightly more animated each time, which convinced Ingrid that her other interest–apart from newly separated millionaires and being intuitive–was cocaine.

Hell wasn’t other people: it was coked-up other people.

By eleven, they’d just finished the cheese and Jim was waving his arm in the air to urge the waiter with the liqueurs trolley to take another turn in their direction. Ingrid thought she might get up and stab Jim with her knife. Or even a spoon. It would be possible, she was sure, if she used enough force. She looked longingly at her husband, but he was avoiding her anguished gaze.

What was wrong with David? He’d been talking in low voice to Jim all night. Even though he knew she was being bored rigid by Carmel, he hadn’t tried to include the two women in their conversation or even to drop the ‘we can’t stay late because we have to go home and let the dogs out,’ excuse.

Ingrid tried to kick him under the table as she was too far away to grab him with a clawed hand and scratch ‘help’ on his thigh. But she couldn’t reach to kick. She glared at him. He knew her signals by now.

‘Another cognac, David? Ah, you will. Sure, it’s Sunday tomorrow. You don’t have to get up or anything. Herself can bring you the breakfast in bed.’ This was accompanied by a nudge and a wink.

Ingrid folded her napkin and put it firmly on the table. ‘Jim, Carmel, what a lovely evening,’ she said crisply, reaching down for her small clutch bag. ‘But we’ll have to pass on another drink. I’m exhausted and I know David is too. Thank you so much.’ She got to her feet, slipped her wrap from the back of the chair and put it round her shoulders.

Jim and Carmel stared up at her, but David, who’d seen Ingrid utilise her emergency departure trick before, merely smiled and got to his feet too. Action was important, a legendary Irish actress had once told Ingrid.

‘If they’re bores, they’re going to want to continue to be bores and no matter how much champagne you drink, that won’t improve. Get up gracefully, move back from your chair, gather your things and say goodbye firmly. There’s no way back from that.’

‘Might they not think you’re rude?’ Ingrid wondered.

‘You do it with style and speed,’ the actress went on. ‘Imbue yourself with the glamour and power you’ve worked for, my dear. You’re a star and, though you might not like to turn it on, you can when you need it. Flick that switch, become the TV star, and state that it’s time for you to go. Never fails.’

It didn’t fail now either.

Jim blustered a little bit.

‘You don’t have to go yet–’ he began.

‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ Ingrid repeated. Really, there were things in her fridge that were smarter than Jim.

‘Goodnight, Carmel.’ Ingrid held out her hand. She couldn’t face the hypocrisy of kissing this woman goodbye.

They didn’t speak in the taxi on the way home. If David had wanted to ensure they didn’t have any civil conversation that night, he’d done a good job, Ingrid thought as she lay in bed, too annoyed by the whole evening to sleep.

He was dozing already and Ingrid sighed and picked up her book.

Ingrid enjoyed Sundays: they were family days and she prided herself on cooking Sunday lunch. She liked cooking. Nothing fussy, just good simple food with no pretensions. Everyone had their favourite. Molly adored grilled fish, salad and roast potatoes followed by Ingrid’s home-made caramel meringue. Ethan loved roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and something sinful in the chocolate department for dessert. David’s favourite was garlicky chicken with stuffing and smelly cheese to follow.

Ingrid’s own favourite was nothing to do with food: it was having them all there.

Today, she had the radio set to her favourite Sunday news chat show, the double doors into the garden were ajar to let a little air in, and the dogs were arranged bonelessly on the tiled floor, worn out after a fast four-mile walk. Ingrid had woken early again and found she couldn’t sleep, except this time, David was fast asleep beside her, looking grey with tiredness. She’d slipped out of bed quietly, and taken the dogs out for their walk before buying the papers and sitting down to read them with a pot of coffee beside her. He’d finally emerged at nearly one, unshaven and unshowered.

‘Coffee?’ Ingrid had asked. It was unlike him to sleep so late and now he looked wretched. ‘You look terrible, David,’ she added. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

No,’ he said and it was almost a growl of exhaustion. ‘I’m overtired.’ He sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

‘You don’t have any pain in your arm or anything?’ she asked, trying to stay calm but feeling terrified because he was looked so unwell. He could be having a heart attack and he mightn’t know it. It would be just like him to sit there and say, ‘Yes, darling, phone for an ambulance if you have a moment.’

‘Don’t fuss, Ingrid,’ he said sharply. ‘I’m fine, really. I’ve a pain in my head, not my arm and coffee would be great. Please,’ he added after a pause.

She nodded, feeling weak with shock. And then anger. There was no need to speak to her like that. She’d only been asking–

‘Surprise!’ said a voice.

‘Molly!’

Their daughter stood in the kitchen, arms full of bags. ‘You’re all getting deaf,’ she said, putting down her stuff and then petting the dogs. ‘I yelled hello when I came in.’

Ingrid shot her daughter a look which Molly could interpret easily after twenty-three years. It was the ‘don’t bother your dad’ look.

Molly nodded imperceptibly and hugged her father gently. Ingrid watched him and could see his face relax.

‘How are you, Pumpkin?’

‘Fine, Dad.’ Molly planted a kiss on his forehead. ‘Late night?’

‘A bit,’ David admitted ruefully. ‘Jim Fitzgibbon was pouring wine into me.’

Molly chuckled, and left her father to give her mother a hello kiss. ‘Since when has anyone had to pour wine into you, Dad?’ she teased, and just like that, the tension went out of the room.

‘Are you calling me a boozer, you brat?’

Both women laughed.

‘If the cap fits…’ said Molly. ‘Only kidding. Where were you, anyway?’

‘Renaldo’s,’ said Ingrid, getting out another cup for her daughter. She poured more coffee and sat down at the table beside her family.

‘How’s Fiona?’ asked Molly.

‘That’s the problem,’ Ingrid sighed. ‘Jim and Fiona have split up, so we had to meet his new woman. I don’t think she was your cup of tea, either, love?’

Ingrid smiled at her husband, a peacemaking smile to say she was sorry she’d been so angry about having to endure the evening, and could he be sorry for being such a grouch?

‘No,’ David agreed. ‘Sorry about that. On the phone, Jim made her sound like a cross between Mother Teresa and Angelina Jolie.’

Molly’s eyes widened. ‘And was she?’

David’s smile to Ingrid reached his eyes. ‘Not really. She looked fine–’

‘–a bit obvious,’ Ingrid interrupted. ‘A spray-on Gucci mini-dress and pole-dancing sandals isn’t exactly the right outfit for a first-time dinner with your new partner’s oldest friend.’

‘It was the conversation that was the problem,’ David went on. ‘She wants to be in television.’

‘You were listening?’

He grinned. ‘Sorry, I know you thought I wasn’t rescuing you. Despite all his boasting, Jim’s business is in trouble and he wanted to bend my ear about it. I couldn’t interrupt him, but I heard the bit about television.’

‘One of those.’ Molly groaned.

‘How’s Natalie? When’s Lizzie’s wedding?’

‘The fourteenth. Apparently Lizzie’s always had a thing about being married on Valentine’s Day. The hen night’s next weekend and the flat’s full of mad stuff: pink fluffy ears and things.’

Ingrid smiled. Her pre-wedding party had been a very sedate affair compared to the ones girls had now.

‘Are you going to the hen night?’

‘Not so far. Natalie wants me to, but I’m trying to get out of it. Lizzie’s great, but I’m not one of her long-time friends and everyone else on the hen night is. She’s known them for years.’

Ingrid nodded but she felt the catch in her throat she so often felt about her older child. Molly had always been shy, although she hid it well enough. She was friendly and charming, well brought up enough to be polite, so few people would know how shy she was. She’d never been one of those children comfortable in the middle of a group; for the first year of school, she’d cried every single morning when Ingrid left her.

‘Oh, hen parties are all a bit mad now,’ Ingrid said nonchalantly. ‘It’ll probably be wild,’ she added, wishing inwardly that, for once, Molly would want to join in. Ingrid knew that you couldn’t make a person behave in a certain way, but how could two such outgoing people as herself and David have a daughter who was the opposite?

At school, there had never been any special friend, never any one little girl Molly adored and brought home to play. Molly was at her happiest in her own company, reading or talking to the pets–back then, the family had a mad collie with one ear, and a minxy cat who collected small cuddly toys and brought them into her bed at night.

Molly loved to curl up on her bed and read, with one or both of the animals snuggled beside her. Accepting that her daughter was a solitary little person had been one of the toughest lessons Ingrid had ever had to learn.

Ingrid was thrilled that her darling Molly shared a flat with Natalie. They’d met at college and for the first time in her life, Molly had found a close friend.

Both were serious in their own way: Molly with her charity work and Natalie with her absolute dedication to jewellery design. She’d put herself through college and was working part-time in the café in Kenny’s to raise funds to set up her own business. She had lots of drive and ambition, and yet there was a vulnerable side to her, Ingrid felt.

Trust Molly to have held out until she found a friend with integrity.

When Molly had gone, Ingrid walked around tidying up. She loved their house. Guests were surprised to see that it was the antithesis of Kenny’s Edwardian charm. Instead, Ingrid and David’s home was coolly modern, with large open-plan spaces and swathes of pale wall. The floors were bleached wood, except in the kitchen, where the restaurant-style stainless steel was offset by polished poured-concrete slabs. Ingrid’s love of white was reflected in couches and chairs upholstered in warm white loose covers, with colour coming from the artwork on their walls, including many works by the emerging artists that David loved to support. The large burst of colour in the hall came from a giant tapestry from Kenny’s, one of the unusual Bluestone Tapestries. It depicted a wooden house nestled in a glade of trees, all of which was partly obscured by banks of peonies in the foreground.

The nine o’clock news began and David was already yawning. Ingrid watched him affectionately and thought of the joke when they were younger about being ‘in bed before the news’. Of course, back then, they went to bed to make love. These days, that happened somewhat less. Tiredness, Ingrid knew, was a major reason. And although it was a subject they were careful to talk about, it took longer for both of them to get in the mood than it had when they were younger. The wham, bam, thank you, mam days were over. Ingrid had never liked speedy sex anyway, even though it was flattering to think that David couldn’t wait for her, needed to be inside her. But she rarely orgasmed that way: she needed time and gentleness, and now their love-making took time. It suited her, working up to heat instead of exploding into a fireball straight off.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said softly.

David looked up from the news, his clever grey eyes intense as they stared at her. Unreadable, she would have said, had it been anyone else. But she knew him and all his moods. She could see desire there.

He flicked off the television with the remote control, stretched long legs out slowly, then got to his feet. He held out his hand: ‘Come on,’ he said.

Their bedroom was one of the only carpeted rooms in the house and as soon as they reached it, Ingrid took off her shoes and let her bare feet luxuriate in the soft wool. She switched on the lamps, letting light warm the room, creating a burnished glow on the expanse of bed covered by a king-sized silk throw in a muted jade colour.

‘Are you too tired?’ she asked David as she sat on the edge of the bed and began unbuttoning her crisp white shirt.

He shook his head, then joined her.

Ingrid hadn’t been a virgin when she’d met David. She’d had three lovers, which, she knew, was quite average. He’d had more and they’d promised never to become jealous of people long gone in the way some couples did.

All Ingrid knew was that her other lovers had never been able to make her feel as if this was the only way to make love, as if now was the most perfect moment. She had no idea how many times they’d gone to bed together over the course of their marriage, but as soon as David’s hand wound its way around her to pull her closer so he could kiss her, she felt that familiar stirring inside.

Tonight, there was an urgency in his kisses and he cradled her skull in both hands as their mouths merged. When he gently pulled her shirt away from her body and curved his fingers over her breasts, it was like he’d never done it before. Ingrid let herself melt into this fresh passion. This was his apology, she knew. He was saying sorry for his distance in the only way he could: by making love to her.

When he finally entered her, his familiar face above hers, Ingrid felt a surge of pure happiness. This was love, she thought, raising her head to nuzzle his shoulder. Sharing everything with another human being. She knew his body as well as she knew her own, knew when he was close to orgasm, knew that if she concentrated on the fierce heat and if his fingers reached into her wetness, that she’d explode at the same time as him. And then it came: fireworks inside her, a single explosion searing into thousands of exquisite ripples that made her cry out.

He fell on to his side of the bed with a groan afterwards, and Ingrid kept the contact between them by reaching one bare leg out over his. She lay there quietly and happily, listening to his breathing slow until she was sure he was asleep.

‘Goodnight, darling David,’ she murmured, kissing him.

In reply, he muttered something she didn’t quite hear.

With one last gentle pat, she drew the sheet up around his waist, then got out of bed to go through her night-time routine. Cleanse, moisturise and brush teeth. As she stood in the bathroom and carefully creamed her skin with body lotion, she reflected again on how no cosmetic could make a person feel beautiful the way being loved did.

2

Be true to yourself. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? I mean, what’s true? But you’ll know when you get there, trust me on this.

The following Saturday night Natalie Flynn sat on a barstool in Club Laguna, letting the music and the noise flow around her, and thought idly of her word for the day. Lodestone. A person or a thing regarded as a focus. Lodestone. Natalie rolled it around in her mouth. She looked up a new word in her dictionary every day. People with dyslexia were liable to have diminished vocabularies and Natalie knew she was one of them, so she’d bought a dictionary when she left school. Each day, she closed her eyes, opened a page and pointed.

When she was a kid, a boy in her school named Ben had dyspraxia. Natalie asked him what it meant.

‘I fall over things. Clumsy, they say.’

‘You’re not clumsy, you’re just a big person and the world is too small for you,’ she’d said. Ben was massive, with hands like giant hams. ‘They said I was stupid. Not my family, other people did. And it turned out I’m not; I’m dyslexic, that’s all.’

‘All the “dy” words are bad,’ Ben said gloomily. At the time, they were sitting outside Miss Evans’s room. Miss Evans took Special Education classes. People who didn’t have to go to Special Ed made Hunchback of Notre Dame faces and mouthed ‘special’ as if they had speech defects at people who did. Ben and Natalie were used to it. Natalie sometimes stuck her tongue out at the people involved, but not all the time.

She’d finally worked out that the people who teased about special education were the very ones in need of it themselves.

Ben and Natalie considered the dy words.

Dyspraxia–called clumsy by stupid people.

Dyslexia–word blindness was how Natalie liked to describe it.

‘Dysfunctional,’ added Joanne, who was in her final year in school, and who went to Special Ed because she kept missing school. Joanne’s father was unreliable, which Natalie realised was some sort of adult code for crazy. During his unreliable periods, Joanne didn’t turn up for school much, which meant she would not be doing her Leaving Cert exams with everyone else in her class.

Natalie sometimes wondered what Joanne was doing now. Joanne had seemed so grown up then, yet she’d only been four years older than Natalie. She’d be twenty-seven now.

Yesterday’s word had been opaque. Natalie had loved that. It was a word you could touch. Back on the farm in the small shed that she used as a studio, she had sifted the semi-precious stones through her fingers, working out which ones were opaque. Some tiger’s eye, lots of the misty smoky quartzes. Lodestone was a good word, too. She wondered how she’d never heard it before. That’s what she did as a jeweller: work with metals and stones to make talismans that hung around people’s necks or on their wrists, stones that meant something to them.

Lodestone. It could mean a person who was the focus of attention too, not just a thing. Sitting quietly on her barstool, a little apart from the other girls at Lizzie’s hen night, Natalie gazed around her and tried to apply her new word to her surroundings.

When they were alone or uncomfortable, other people read magazines or texted their friends. Because of her dyslexia, Natalie did neither. She hated text-speak; the strange jumble of letters seemed utterly wrong to her even when the predictive text gizmo claimed it was right.

‘You’re like my mother,’ said Molly, her flatmate. ‘She hates texting.’

Natalie smiled at the thought of being compared to the erudite Ingrid Fitzgerald, who’d probably read the entire dictionary cover to cover and committed it to memory. Molly’s mother was the sort of person who should have made her feel insecure, yet she didn’t. Ingrid wore her intelligence lightly, treating everyone with the same level of respect. Natalie never felt like an idiot in her presence.

‘Your mother only hates texting because it stops people being able to spell properly. I’ve never been able to spell in the first place.’

‘You spell just fine. You’re clever where it counts,’ Molly said. ‘Look at all the people we know who have degrees coming out their ears and are still clueless.’

They’d met at college while Natalie had been painfully trying to negotiate the written part of the foundation art course. Give her clay to mould, and she could spin poetry. But hand her a pen, and she was like a small child wielding a crayon and trying to work out the difference between the number six and the number nine. It was why she’d hated school.

She wished Molly was here tonight for the hen-night extravaganza but her flatmate, not being much of a party person, had elected to stay at home with the cats. Hopeless at small talk with humans, Molly talked to her beloved Bambi and Loopy as though they were her babies, all three of them curled up together on the couch watching TV. The cats liked programmes with fish in them best.

‘I love them too, but an hour of National Geographic just for them?’ Natalie had said before she left the house, complete with a sports bag jammed with hen-night paraphernalia, the pièce de résistance being fake zebra-skin cowboy hats.

‘We’re only watching till the end of this show,’ Molly said seriously, ‘and then we’re turning over to the salsa programme.’

Natalie nodded. ‘When the men with the white coats arrive, will I make them tea or coffee?’

Molly beamed a wide smile that lit up her small, round face and made her eyes dance. Apart from her eyes, she looked nothing like her famous mother. Short and adolescently skinny, she had reddish-brown curly hair that she liked to wear in a ponytail. Even when dressed for work and presiding over weighty reports on poverty, she looked about sixteen instead of twenty-three.

‘The men in the white coats had tea the last time,’ she said. ‘They might have coffee this. I know I’m mad, but I like the fish programmes too,’ she added. ‘Fish are very soothing. And there’s nothing else on TV tonight. I’m fed up with forensic science shows, they give me nightmares. There’s a good film on later.’

Something romantic, Natalie guessed fondly. Molly might work at the sharp end of society, but for relaxation, she devoured romantic novels and movies. The only thing that might get her off the couch was a real-life Johnny-Depp type in Regency costume with the desire to crush Molly to his manly bosom.

‘I got you a hat, just in case you wanted to come…’ Natalie plonked a zebra-skin cowboy hat on her friend’s head.

‘I love it!’ Molly sat up to adjust the hat, then wriggled back down into the couch. ‘I’m happier here, Nat, honestly. I’m no good at that party thing. I’d prefer watching it to being in the middle of it, but if you watch, everyone thinks you’re a weirdo. Besides, we haven’t organised a cat-sitter.’

‘See you later, crazy lady,’ said Natalie, leaving.

Lizzie always said that Natalie and Molly were bad for each other because they liked being home so much. Her idea of a good time didn’t involve cats, the TV or books. But then Lizzie didn’t appreciate that Natalie stayed in at night slaving away on her designs because she was determined to succeed as a jewellery designer. She couldn’t do that and be in clubs and pubs every night of the week like Lizzie. Natalie enjoyed going out when the mood took her. Though tonight, strangely, she wasn’t in the mood. Instead she was worried.

There had been such an emotional build-up to the hen night and Lizzie was so fiercely determined to have a good time, determined to have one last wild party before she tied the knot, that Natalie feared the evening wouldn’t end well.

Club Laguna itself was opaque, from the all subdued lighting that made you think you were wearing your sunglasses indoors. Even the mirrors behind the bar added to the effect: opaque glass and the lodestone was…Lizzie. Which was only fair; it was Lizzie’s hen night, after all.

Ten women from Lizzie’s life had been hauled together for this momentous party: Natalie and Anna from school, her two mad cousins from Donegal who’d rolled up looking like off-duty supermodels, a couple of girls from college and three from Lizzie’s office. The party had started three hours before in Lizzie’s flat and Lizzie clearly wanted it to go on all night. As the person charged with organising the whole thing, Natalie would have to stay to the bitter end. But she was tired. Working in the café in Kenny’s by day and designing her jewellery by night meant she had very little energy. Certainly not the energy Lizzie and the other hens seemed to have, energy for squealing as they admired dresses, shoes and passing men. Wearing their zebra cowboy hats–‘Nat, you genius! I love them!’–the hens were attracting plenty of attention from several predatory men. So far, all boarders had been repelled, although one guy–in a denim shirt that displayed his fabulous muscles and with a tiny skull-and-crossbones earring in one ear that showed off how cool he was–was watching from the sidelines, clearly pretty keen on Lizzie. He’d get bored, Natalie hoped.

She watched the barman diligently mix the cocktails. Swirl some crimson liquid into the shaker, do a little smooth move to impress the ladies, add something clear from a modern frosted glass bottle, crash in some ice, then shake.

The women clustered round the art deco glass bar murmured approval.

‘More vodka,’ shrieked Lizzie, a tousled brunette who was kneeling on the barstool so she could see all the action, though she’d definitely had enough vodka already. Four vodka tonics and a white wine spritzer, and now she’d ordered the bar’s speciality: the Laguna Beach, a concoction that came complete with a voucher for the Betty Ford Clinic. She’d already decided she wasn’t wearing enough make-up and had clumsily added another layer of eyeliner in the dark gloom of the ladies’ where you needed a torch to find the flush button on the loo. The dark and the drink combined had not resulted in a classy make-up look.

Natalie thought there was a business opening for anyone who patented a range of make-up bags with breathalyser gadgets fitted to their zips: once you were drunk, you couldn’t open the bag and start applying drag-queen levels of cosmetics.

She’d done it herself and had the photos to prove it. Marilyn Manson meets Picasso with a side order of vampire chic thrown in. It wasn’t a good look, given that she could pass for Gothic heroine easily enough anyway. Depending on what she wore, Natalie’s look could go either way: young and interesting or consumptively strange. She was pale-skinned, prone to purple shadows under her heliotrope eyes and with long ebony hair that never looked entirely brushed. In jeans and a T-shirt, her lean legginess and youthful skin gave her the look of a student, even though she was twenty-three and out of college. In tonight’s party outfit of sapphire-blue slip dress, she was working the girl-next-door-with-a-hint-of-edginess look.

‘Hot and sexy,’ Molly had decreed earlier when Natalie was getting ready. ‘But in control; not “I’m available, big boy” sexy, more “You can look, but don’t touch” sexy.’

Part of their routine was outfit-grading before they left the flat. Despite her own charity-shop look, Molly was brilliant at gauging outfits and their suitability for events. Natalie could do it with jewellery, but when it came to clothes, it was so easy to get it wrong.

‘That’s good. Don’t want to be too hot and sexy,’ Natalie said, pulling the slip dress down, wishing it was longer so it covered more leg. ‘It’ll be mad enough tonight as it is.’

‘More juice!’ she heard Anna yell to the Club Laguna barman, who winked at her as he wielded his shaker. Anna wasn’t much of a drinker. ‘I can’t stand feeling woozy,’ she said.

That statement was like a red rag to most men. In the many years the three girls had been friends–a bonding of five-year-olds in the school yard–Natalie had lost count of the number of guys who’d tried to get Anna to lose control, hoping that a few more sips of Chardonnay would make her unfurl her sweetly prim manner like a secretary in a cheesy movie letting down her hair. Lizzie, who was permanently unfurled and smiled at men like an eager puppy, was ignored in the rush to Anna.

‘It’s not fair,’ Lizzie used to say without bitterness. She adored Anna, even if her friend was a man magnet while she appeared to repel them.

‘It’s the hair,’ Anna said apologetically. ‘There’s some evolutionary thing about natural redheads; men love the hair. They’re programmed to want to mate with it. It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘It’s more than the hair,’ Lizzie would sigh. Anna was so perfect: tiny, perfectly proportioned and with those dancing pale blue eyes. Men loved how big she made them feel. She wore size three shoes and her wrists were as delicate as a porcelain doll’s.

And then Steve had come along. Without giving Anna a second look, he’d been instantly besotted with Lizzie.

Natalie wondered how Steve’s stag night was going. There had been talk of the men going to a lap-dancing club with Steve’s old college friend over from San Diego, but Lizzie had been outraged.

‘It’s supposed to be your last night out before marrying the girl you love, not an excuse to drool over naked women with figures like Barbie!’

It wasn’t the latent sexuality she had a problem with, Natalie knew: more that Lizzie wished she was a Barbie lookalike herself. The pre-wedding diet hadn’t been as successful as had been hoped. She was still eight pounds off her target weight and complained of appearing heifer-like.

‘I’ll look huge in the photos standing between you two,’ Lizzie had grumbled earlier as they changed into their party gear. She was wearing a silky slip dress with long trailing skirts and a tiny camisole bodice which was doing a mediocre job of holding her breasts in. She was not wearing a bra. Neither was Natalie, but then she was a 32A and Lizzie was a healthy 36D.

‘Oh, Lizzie, get down off the cross,’ muttered Natalie. ‘Somebody else needs the wood. We have three different looks, that’s all,’ she added, relenting. Lizzie’s figure anxiety was a barometer of her mood. In times of stress, it became more pronounced and she needed more reassurance. ‘Anna works the cute look, you do curvy and hot.’ Lizzie grinned despite herself. ‘And I’m the lanky one. I wish I had curves like yours.’

A lie, but a white one to make Lizzie feel better. Natalie’s stepmother, Bess, was a seamstress who made a lot of wedding dresses and Natalie had grown up hearing about bridal anxiety.

‘No you don’t,’ Lizzie replied, but she was smiling as she tried on her hen-night regalia.

As part of her preparations for the evening Natalie had dutifully bought pink fluffy horns, T-shirts emblazoned with Bride on Tour and had booked a booth in Laguna, a happening club where the karaoke machine got turned on at eleven and poles were put up on stage for anyone wanting to try pole dancing and willing to sign the insurance waiver first.

It was ten to eleven now. Lizzie knew there was a still long night ahead.

She was thrilled her friend was happy. Steve was such a nice guy: kind, polite, decent. But Natalie couldn’t help recalling how, when they were younger, the three of them had had such dreams about conquering the world. And now they were twenty-three and suddenly it seemed as if the world had shrunk. Anna was dating a guy who was perfect on paper but slightly dull in real life. Gavin worked in the bank, owned his own flat, played rugby with his old school friends at the weekend and wore rugby jerseys with the collars turned up. Give him another ten years and he’d have golf club membership and a rowing machine with clothes thrown over it in the bedroom. They used to laugh at guys like him, the safe guys, and now Anna was enraptured.

Lizzie was getting married in a week to the sweet and kind Steve–and she wouldn’t be wearing bright red, the way she’d always promised: ‘I’ll never go down the aisle in white: the roof of the church would fall in!!’

Instead, her dress was creamy lace with a bustier top to make the most of her assets; her dark curls would be covered by a demure veil, and the guest list included all the various horrors of relations that she’d sworn blind would never get invited.

‘You have to ask them,’ she’d said when Natalie dropped by and found her fretting over the seating plan. Great Aunt Mona couldn’t sit with Uncle Tom or they’d kill one another. They hadn’t met without rowing in fifty years and it was unlikely they were about to stop now.

‘Why do you have to ask them?’

‘Because, that’s why.’

‘You never see any of them, except at other people’s weddings and funerals. I thought this day was supposed to be about you and Steve, not the usual outdated cliché of a wedding with ninety awful second-cousins-once-removed.’

Lizzie grimaced at having her words quoted back at her.

‘My mother would die if we didn’t have a big wedding,’ she said. ‘You know what she’s like, Natalie. Anyway…’ Lizzie paused. ‘I know it sounds strange, but I like the idea of having them there. It makes it real when all the cousins and aunties show up. Like we wouldn’t be properly married if we did it on a beach somewhere without them all clucking over the waste of money spent on the flowers or giving out about the bones in the fish.’

Natalie laughed. ‘Point taken. But when they’re all squabbling because you’ve sat them too far from the top table, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘Mum will sort them out,’ laughed Lizzie.

Once, thinking of Lizzie’s mum might have upset Natalie. When she was a child, she’d felt different because she didn’t have a mum. She wasn’t the only kid in her class to have an unusual family set-up. There were two kids whose dads lived elsewhere, and one boy who had two families: his mother and stepfather, and his dad and stepmother, plus assorted brothers and sisters. And there was Eileen, a quiet mouse of a girl with long strawberry blonde hair she wore like a curtain hiding her eyes. She lived on her own with her mother and went mute whenever any event came up that involved dads.

Eileen might not have had a dad, but she had a mother. Even when Natalie was seven and her mind was gently exploring such things, even when Eileen was by far the strangest kid in the class, even then Natalie knew that Eileen had something she didn’t: a real mother.

Dads sometimes got involved in other things or worked all hours, but mums didn’t. Mums were there. Except for Natalie Flynn’s. Her mum was dead. She had Bess instead, her stepmum, who was wonderful, and so kind, but still wasn’t her real mum. She’d said Natalie didn’t have to call her ‘Mum’, so Natalie hadn’t; and that simple thing, that name, had strangely made all the difference. Other kids had mums and dads: Natalie had Dad and Bess. And Bess, no matter how wonderful, wasn’t Mum.

Natalie forgot loads of things: the sheer pain of writing her thesis had burned off so many brain cells, but she’d never forget the first time she was asked:

‘What’s it like not to have a mum?’

Toby–now grown up and cute, and always friendly whenever she went to the garage he ran–had been a teacher’s nightmare at the age of seven: hyperactive and overfond of the word ‘why?’

Why does the sun go down at night?

Why are the people on the television so small?

Why do we have to go to school?

Why did your mum die? Are you still sad about her being dead?

Natalie could see her seven-year-old self: a skinny little thing, with those matchstick legs poking out of the grey-and-white school uniform and her dark hair tangled and coming out of its ponytail no matter how carefully Bess did it before she went to school.

‘I’m not sad,’ she’d said defiantly. Toby obviously wanted her to say she was sad, so it was important to say she wasn’t. Toby said girls couldn’t climb trees and she’d shown him he was wrong. She’d skinned her knees in the process, but she’d shown him.

‘I’m never sad.’

Had she stuck her tongue out at him then? That she couldn’t remember. Probably. Sticking out your tongue was a vital way of winning arguments when she was seven, akin to pulling wimpy girls’ hair and jumping on to any bit of wall to dance along it.

She’d gone home and told Dad and Bess what Toby had said, and they’d exchanged that look that grown-ups did when they didn’t want to answer the question.

She had no memory of what her father had said, although she could remember subsequent conversations: God takes people sometimes, we don’t know why.

God’s responsibility had shifted vastly when the ten-year-old Natalie had said: ‘I hate God.’

Bess hadn’t missed a beat. ‘We don’t always understand what God does. We just have to accept it.’

Natalie had never accepted it.

There were so many pluses in her life: a lovely family with Bess as the centrepoint, Dad being sweet and just a little bit not-of-this-planet, her half-brothers Ted and Joe, and good friends like Molly. She had so much, particularly when she looked at the disadvantaged kids whom Molly worked with. Compared to them, she was rich in every way. Yet Natalie felt as if there was a part of her missing.

Lizzie and Anna seemed to think that any missing bit could be fixed with the right man. Natalie felt it was more than that. But what exactly?

‘Hi, beautiful, can I buy you a drink?’ she heard the guy with the skull-and-crossbones earring ask Lizzie.

Natalie could see him reflected in the bar mirror. He was tall, and good-looking enough for one of Lizzie’s model cousins to be giving him a hard, appreciative stare. Natalie took in the tousled fair hair and the honed body. She also saw Lizzie’s lustful look.

‘No thanks,’ Natalie broke in as politely as she could. ‘It’s a hen night. No men allowed.’

‘Spoilsport,’ murmured Lizzie, leaning on Natalie and smiling up at the guy.

‘No, really, no guys allowed,’ Anna said firmly, hauling Lizzie away.

He shrugged and walked off.

‘He was cute,’ Lizzie sighed. ‘I could take him for a test drive…?’

Anna and Natalie exchanged a look. It was indeed going to be a long night.

It was nearly two when Anna and Natalie realised that Lizzie was missing. The group had been dancing non-stop, so each time Natalie came back to their booth and didn’t see Lizzie, she assumed her friend was dancing with the other girls.

‘I thought the same,’ said Anna, shouting so they could hear each other over the music.

Nobody else had seen her for an hour.

Natalie found Lizzie first. At the very back of the club, in a dimly lit spot beside the fire exit, she was perched on a man’s lap with her arms wrapped around his body and her mouth clamped to his as if they were giving each other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. One of his hands was tangled up in Lizzie’s dark hair, the other was burrowing up under her flirty dress, so her thigh was totally bared.

Natalie’s first thought was that her friend must be comatose to be behaving like this, but then she looked again. Lizzie was as ardent as the guy: she was writhing around on his lap, plunging her tongue into his mouth. It was the same guy who’d made a move on Lizzie earlier, the one with the denim shirt and the skull-and-crossbones earring. Lizzie had wanted this, Natalie realised: she was a willing partner.

‘Lizzie!’ shouted Natalie, trying to be heard over the throbbing bass notes of the music. ‘Lizzie!’

She shook her friend’s arm and Lizzie turned round, the crimson lipstick almost gone from her lips, leaving nothing but a giant red Munch-like scream smeared around her mouth from kissing. She smiled lazily at her friend, snuggled close to the man’s chest. Her eyes glittered with raw excitement.

It was the smile that hurt Natalie the most: a knowing, satisfied, mocking smile.

‘Lizzie, we’ve got to go,’ Natalie said, trying to stay calm in the face of this unrecognisable Lizzie.

‘Not yet,’ said Lizzie, still with that smile plastered across her face. She nuzzled into the man’s neck. ‘We’re having fun.’

Natalie decided that she’d have to try another approach.

‘This is her hen night,’ Natalie explained to the guy. ‘She’s getting married in a week. Her fiancé’s a cop. He’s on the drugs squad.’ This was, of course, entirely untrue, but she guessed it might be a deal-breaker.

Sure enough, alarm flickered in the guy’s face and he got up at speed, letting Lizzie fall unceremoniously to the floor.

‘Ouch!’ she roared.

Natalie and the guy ignored her.

‘For real?’ he asked. He meant about the drugs squad.

Natalie nodded grimly. ‘For real.’

Without a backward glance, the guy shoved the bar of the emergency exit and opened it. Cold wind and a gush of rain blasted in as he vanished out into the dark. Natalie shivered.

She glanced at Lizzie on the floor. Lizzie looked sulky now. She had a big tear on one side of the bodice of her dress where her admirer had been trying over-enthusiastically to access her boobs.

‘Home,’ Natalie said.

‘You ruined it all, Natalie!’ shrieked Lizzie.

‘Yes,’ Natalie agreed, ‘I ruined it all. Come on, let’s go. Where’s your stuff?’

When Natalie hauled her back to their booth, there was no sign of her bag or coat there.

‘Is she OK?’ asked Anna.

‘Oh, fine,’ Natalie said brightly. No point in telling Anna what Lizzie had really been doing. ‘She’s tired and emotional.’

‘Me too,’ sighed Anna. ‘And I’m exhausted. Can we go home now?’

‘Sure. I need to find Lizzie’s things.’

Lizzie’s coat was found in a heap on the floor under the table, but her bag was nowhere to be seen.

Lizzie was too out of it to be the slightest bit worried about this.

‘Cheap bag!’ she kept saying loudly. ‘Cheap bag.’

‘What’s inside it is what counts,’ Natalie said: ‘your wallet, keys and phone.’

‘Cheap, cheap–’

Finally, Natalie gave up looking. The club was heaving by now and she was tired. ‘Home,’ she said to Lizzie, then realised she couldn’t send Lizzie back to the flat she shared with Steve in that condition. ‘You’d better come with me.’

The next morning, Lizzie woke first and ran to the bathroom. Natalie could hear retching, and the bedroom reeked of stale alcohol. Even the bed smelled of boozy sweat. Natalie got up and began stripping off the sheets. She couldn’t wait to wash them, to get rid of the memory of last night. There had been something disturbing about seeing her friend in such a terrible state. Lizzie had been more than drunk, she was out of control. The pillowcase from her side of the bed was striped with make-up. Skin-cleansing hadn’t been high on the agenda when Natalie had finally got her back to the flat. She’d had enough trouble getting Lizzie into bed in the first place. It had taken a lot of cajoling. And then, in bed, Lizzie had shouted that nobody understood her and how horrible Natalie was being, when all she wanted was to have some fun. Then, suddenly, she’d lain down on the bed and fallen asleep in an instant.

‘Don’t do the bed,’ moaned Lizzie, staggering back into the bedroom looking like a representative of the undead. ‘I need to lie down, pleeese.’

‘You can lie down on the couch,’ Natalie said shortly. ‘This place stinks and I need to wash the sheets.’

‘Oh nooo.’ Lizzie lay down on the pile of dirty sheets and curled up into a ball. ‘I can lie here. I’ll wash them later.’

‘Later, if you remember,’ Natalie reminded her tartly, ‘you’re meeting Steve’s friend from San Diego. The one who went with them on the stag night–the wild one, remember? The one you were scared was going to take Steve to all manner of unsuitable clubs to meet unsuitable women.’

Lizzie was chalk white as it was, but at the mention of her fiancé, her face began to look even more ghostly. ‘Shit.’

‘You can say that again,’ Natalie said.

‘Don’t, please don’t,’ begged Lizzie.

‘Don’t what? Remind you about last night?’ Natalie thought of how she’d hauled Lizzie out of the club after giving up on the handbag, and of the people Lizzie had drunkenly bumped into on the way, threatening to start a fight over it, even though she was the one who’d bumped into them. Lizzie! Funny, normally gentle Lizzie.

It had been a nightmare. And then the guy, the guy Lizzie had been with, poor Steve totally forgotten. That was the worst.

‘What do you remember?’ Natalie demanded.

Lizzie covered her eyes with her hands. ‘Lots of it. Too much. I had far too much to drink–’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

‘The guy at the bar, I kissed him–’

‘Kissed him! I thought you were going to devour him, Lizzie. You were glued to him and I had to practically drag you off. If anyone else had seen you and told Steve, can you imagine that?’ Natalie shook her head in disgust. ‘There’s drunk, Lizzie, and there’s crazy–and you were crazy.’

‘I know,’ Lizzie said brokenly. ‘It’s awful, I’m awful. And I promised I’d never, not after the last time–’ she stopped abruptly.

Startled, Natalie stared at her. ‘What last time?’

Lizzie hesitated before whispering: ‘The Christmas party at work. It was work people only, no partners, and there was this big joint being passed around and–Oh, Natalie, you don’t want to know.’

‘You slept with someone else?’ Natalie knew she sounded like the mother superior of a convent, but she couldn’t help it.

Lizzie didn’t reply and that made Natalie absolutely furious.

‘You did! You actually slept with someone because you were stoned, Lizzie, and that didn’t shock you enough, so you still went out on your hen night and got absolutely plastered. If I hadn’t found you, where would you be now? I’ll tell you: you’d be waking up in that guy’s bed–I doubt if you even know his name–and we’d have phoned the police because we thought you were in trouble, and everyone, including your fiancé, would be searching for you now, while you’d be holed up in bed with a hangover with a bloody stranger. That would wreck the Valentine’s Day wedding, for sure. Why would you do that? You don’t need to sleep around with strangers, you’ve got a man who loves you.’

‘Oh, shut up! I hate myself enough, I don’t need you hating me too!’ Lizzie screamed. She clambered to her feet, still bleary-eyed, clutching the sheets to her. ‘Why are you so bloody judgemental, anyway? It’s none of your business; I didn’t kiss your bloody boyfriend, did I? It’s only my life I’m fucking up!’

Suddenly, Natalie felt sorry for what she’d said. Lizzie was right; she was being judgemental and she didn’t know why, because lots of people went out and got terribly drunk on their hen nights. It was almost a rite of passage, wasn’t it? But this had been something worse. Natalie had never seen anyone she loved change so much under the influence of alcohol. Her father barely drank, Bess was the same, and even the boys didn’t drink to the extent that Lizzie had, although she knew many guys their age who did.

It had been part of the family ethos when they’d been growing up: treat alcohol with respect.

But it seemed that Lizzie’s family hadn’t given her the same message. Last night, Lizzie had been like another person: someone Natalie didn’t know and certainly didn’t like.

‘Sorry,’ Natalie said now, and sat down on the mattress. She felt weary after so few hours in bed. ‘I am your friend, Lizzie, but I wouldn’t be a proper friend if I pretended last night was normal or good. I’m not trying to take the moral high ground. You can sleep with who you like, but I can’t stand by and be your bridesmaid if you really don’t want to marry Steve. Why marry him if you want to sleep with other men?’

‘I do want to marry him!’ protested Lizzie. ‘I was drunk, it was a blip. Really.’

‘But–’

‘But nothing. I love Steve. Last night was stupid, that’s all. And he doesn’t need to know, does he?’

‘I suppose not.’ Natalie opened the drawer where she kept clean sheets. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Lizzie. It was like discovering a totally different side to one of her oldest friends. She’d had no idea that Lizzie was capable of a one-night stand before her wedding, and then convincing herself it was all fine, as long as nobody found out. Natalie had found Lizzie’s drunken aggression frightening, but her cool ‘it doesn’t matter as long as nobody knows’ theory was even worse. Lizzie would be devastated if Steve slept with another woman. It wasn’t right not to care that she’d done the same.

‘Where’s my handbag?’ asked Lizzie, looking around the room.

‘You lost it,’ Natalie reminded her. ‘We looked everywhere, but couldn’t find it. You should cancel your credit card, actually.’

‘Oh shit, that’s my phone, my cards, everything!’ wailed Lizzie. ‘What am I going to tell Steve?’

Natalie stared blankly at her clean sheets. She liked the violet-sprigged ones best, and her fingers ran absently over the smooth percale. ‘I’m not sure what you should tell him,’ she said slowly.

‘I know.’ Lizzie sounded confident. ‘We’ll say you and I got totally plastered, we came back here and, even though I’d meant to go home in a taxi, I decided to stay because it was so late. OK?’

No, not OK at all, Natalie thought. But then, it wasn’t her job to fix Lizzie’s relationship or be her moral guardian. ‘OK,’ she said. But her insides felt like lead.

3

Learn how to say no. Practise. Say it at least once every day and you know what? You’ll get better at it.

Charlie sat down with a sigh and eased off her shoes. Blissful cool air enveloped her toes and she wriggled them. The Hatbox Café on Kenny’s second floor wasn’t too busy. The lunchtime rush was over and the afternoon tea people hadn’t yet started wandering in looking for the café’s speciality: pink fairycakes with quirky shoe designs in multi-coloured icing.

The Hatbox had retained its traditional appearance. Old Mr Kenny, who set the store up all those years ago, would have been right at home here. The fittings were still cherry wood and brass, the wallpaper a riot of bosomy Belle Époque girls spilling out of Grecian gowns, and the chairs were still upholstered in ruby velvet. But the staff no longer wore black and white with frilled caps, having long since moved into chic navy trousers and tops with waiter’s white aprons. The menu was similarly up-to-date.

Charlie’s lunch was a bottle of water and a brown bread sandwich. She’d brought a magazine she’d borrowed from the staff room. The magazine was cover. Once she realised nobody wanted to join her for lunch and that she’d have privacy, she took out her little notebook and pen and furtively began to write.

My mother’s a travel agent for guilt trips.

You think that’s a joke? Wrong.

She phoned me at ten to eight in the morning.

‘Charlie, I’m in bed with the flu. Can you pick up my dry cleaning on your way to work? I left my good jackets in, the tweed ones, and my baby-blue coat, and I need them.’

You wouldn’t think that two fake Chanel jackets and a baby-blue woollen coat circa 1963 could make a grown woman want to kill someone with their bare hands, but they can. Dry cleaning can be a powerful tool in the hands of a master.

‘I don’t really have the time. I’m leaving in a few minutes and I have to drop Mikey at school. Can’t you phone Iseult and ask her to do it?’

Pause. The phrase ‘red rag to a bull’ comes to mind. I knew I shouldn’t have said no, but I had to. I mean, I’m the supervisor of the Organic Belle department in Kenny’s, which is not the sort of place where you can be late. Plus, I have a thirteen-year-old son who views arriving a moment late to school with the horror of a Japanese train scheduler facing a leaf-on-the-line crisis, so we don’t have time for either morning phone calls or emergency dry-cleaning stops.

The pause ended abruptly.

‘No, that’s fine,’ snapped my mother. Think Lady Bracknell on crystal meth. ‘I’ll do it myself. I couldn’t sleep last night, you know. My cough’s worse. I don’t know if I’ll last the winter…’

This is where I think that if only she gave up her bloody thirty-a-day smoking habit, the cough wouldn’t get worse, but I don’t say it. There’s only so much reckless abandon I can manage of a morning.

‘I’ll pick up your dry cleaning,’ I say.

‘No, you’re too busy. I’ll do it–’

‘Really, I’ll fit it in.’

‘No, I can look after myself, thank you very much. Nobody needs to fit me into their life.’

Sound of phone slamming down. My mother has broken many phones in her life and refuses to have a portable one because there’s no satisfying slamming down involved.

Not having a portable means she often doesn’t get to the phone in time when I ring and I then panic, imagining her unconscious at the bottom of the stairs or falling asleep in the bath thanks to an enormous martini (triple measure of gin and the vermouth bottle sort of waved about in the vicinity), and I have to keep redialling until she answers with an inevitable growl: ‘What is it? Can’t a girl go to the bathroom in peace?’

My mother likes describing herself as a girl. She waxes lyrical about how she and her friends from the sixties and seventies fought the tyranny of State and Church to bring the Pill and women’s rights into Ireland, all the time referring to ‘this wonderful girl’ or ‘that darling girl’ who faced furious right wingers waving crucifixes. And that’s all wonderful, really. My mother was part of something incredibly important at a time when women couldn’t control their fertility and were prevented from achieving all that they should, and so on and so forth, but–I can’t believe I’m admitting this finally, even if it is only on paper–I find it insanely irritating. I HATE IT! Because ‘girl’ implies sweetness, innocence and a hint of gentleness. My mother is about as girlish as a Hell’s Angel.

She is tough–had to be tough. So stop with the ‘girls’ thing, please. Let everyone else see the gritty person underneath and stop saving it just for me.

She can do the girlish thing, all right. This involves smiling at people (mainly men) and fluttering her eyelashes–she was never one of the bra-burning feminists. She’s the more modern variety, the kind who want red lipstick and push-up bosoms to go with their financial equality in the workplace.

With me, Number Two Daughter, she gives the smiling and fluttering a miss. I get instructions on where I’m going wrong in life: not wearing my hair the correct way, having middle-aged spread (‘So ageing, Charlotte,’ she murmurs), and doing what she considers a menial job are chief on the list. Ideally, I should be ruthlessly running my own company instead of standing at a counter in a department store selling hope in pretty bottles to women. The ideal me would also credit my mother with all my success, along the lines of ‘She taught me everything I know.’

Iseult, my older sister and Number One Daughter, who is beautiful, clever and successful, does not get instructions on where she’s going wrong. She gets compliments and her newspaper clippings kept. Iseult is a playwright. She’s written three plays, two of which were wonderfully received, and there’s talk of one of them going to Broadway. Iseult’s plays are her work-in-progress. My mother considers Iseult to be her best work and has a folder of Iseult’s triumphs since her first play was performed: her favourite is the article in a Galway paper where a famous person and their mother talk about their relationship and Iseult said, along with the obligatory ‘my mother taught me everything I know’, that our mother was always so glamorous that our boyfriends fancied her more than either of us.

I can’t quite remember this myself, but my mother has taken the story and run with it. Not only was she personally responsible for female emancipation in our historically embattled country, she sees herself as a dead ringer for Mrs Robinson in The Graduate.

Now that sounds like carping. It’s not poor Iseult’s fault, don’t get me wrong, God, no. It’s just the way things are in our family, and families are weird, aren’t they? Ours is no weirder than anybody else’s probably: I’m just bad at dealing with it all. I should know better at my age. I’m nearly forty, have a wonderful son, wonderful husband, can’t complain about any of that. It’s just my mother: she drives me nuts. And that’s not normal, is it?

Charlie had never kept a diary before, she’d simply never had the inclination. Iseult was the writer in the family and Charlie liked keeping her own thoughts to herself. But a gratitude journal: now that was a different proposition. She’d heard a woman on the radio talking about a gratitude journal, where you wrote down all the things you were grateful for. Eventually, some alchemy was supposed to take place and the act of writing about being grateful somehow made you actually grateful. That’s how she’d started out at Christmas.

I’m grateful for today when I watched Mikey at football practice and he was so happy, joyful…

…Brendan took me to dinner last night in the Chinese place on the hill and it was wonderful. There was no special occasion; he just thought it would be nice to do something on the spur of the moment. It was. It’s silly how something that simple makes me happy, but it does.

…Sales are up and David Kenny, the big boss, came down to congratulate us and we had champagne–Laurent Perrier, no cheap muck for David–and a bit of a party. Shotsy and I sat in a corner and decided the bonuses would be up, too, which is brilliant because Brendan and I are still paying for the garage conversion and Shotsy has her eye on a little red MG.

Two days before Christmas and a week into pure gratitude, the day came when she was so irritated with her mother that attempting gratitude was a waste of time.

Mother is NOT coming to us for Christmas, even though it was our year to have her and we’d had to say no to going to Wales with Brendan’s family. No, she’s just blithely told me she’s going to Biarritz with Iseult, and who cares if I’ve spent a week getting the place ready for her to stay and buying her favourite food! We can’t go to Wales because Brendan’s sister is now going and there won’t be room for us. And we’d love to have gone, loved it. I am so angry I could scream.

Bizarrely, it had worked. Charlie, who hadn’t written an essay since she left college many years before, filled seven pages.

Instead of burning rage at the rant against her mother, she felt an unusual sense of calm when she was finished. The anger was no longer in her head: it was on paper. Writing words down had a magical quality. It was absolutely alchemy. Anger in her head throbbed relentlessly, but anger on paper was flat and had no power over her. The diary itself still made her feel guilty–treasonous, even. Writing down things that annoyed her was one thing, but the person who annoyed her constantly was her mother and that couldn’t be right. Everyone else adored her mother.

‘She’s fabulous, such a raconteur,’ everyone said.

‘She must have been so beautiful when she was younger.’ Charlie always hoped Kitty never heard that one: the implication was that the beauty was very much a thing of the past, and Kitty Nelson didn’t care to be an ex-beauty. She wanted to be a still-beautiful-for-her-age.

I wish I handled her better, she wrote now. That she didn’t make me so angry all the time. Or, like Brendan says, that I could learn not to get upset. But she has that knack of saying exactly the thing to upset me.

‘The reason your mother can push all your buttons is because she installed them,’ he says to me.

I think he read it on a postcard. Isn’t it annoying that postcards nowadays all come with the wisdom of Nietzsche?

‘Detach with love’ is what Shotsy says to me. If she explains what that means, I’d like to try it, but I have absolutely no idea…

‘Charlie?’

Charlie jumped and her pen leapt across the page with an inky scrawl and fell to the café floor. She actually felt guilty every time she took the notebook out of its hiding place in the ripped bit of lining of her black handbag. No matter how good it felt to write down her feelings, she’d die if anyone actually saw any of it.

‘You writing love letters?’ said a teasing voice.

Dolores, who’d worked in Kenny’s since she was in her teens and was now nearing retirement, plonked a tray on to the table beside Charlie’s untouched sandwich.

‘No,’ answered Charlie cheerily, closing the notebook and stuffing it into her handbag. ‘Lists, you know,’ she added vaguely.

She loved lists. The trick, according to the experts, was not to have too many items. Then, you could realistically achieve them.

‘I hate lists,’ Dolores said, stirring sugar into her coffee. ‘I found one the other day and it was years old, from my fortieth, and it was all the stuff I wanted in my life by the time I turned forty-one.’

‘Like what?’

‘A new car–not a second-hand one, but new. To have lost two stone. To have found the man of my dreams…’ She sighed and began unwrapping salad dressing. ‘None of it has happened: so much for bloody cosmic ordering.’

‘Does it work like that?’ Charlie was instantly terribly sorry she’d asked. Dolores’ ill-fated love life had taken up many a lunchtime among the Kenny’s staff, and while Charlie wished her love, happiness and a double portion of George Clooney with cream on top, she wasn’t emotionally up to another session about how There Were No Decent Men Left.

‘Clearly not,’ Delores said gloomily. ‘Unless it’s cumulative, like compound interest. If you do enough lists, eventually you get some of what you asked for. Perhaps the fact that you stuck at the whole thing counts for something.’

‘Stuck at what? Marriage? Life? Working here?’ Shotsy, birdlike, brown as a walnut and with a whirl of platinum-blonde hair, placed a cup on the table. Charlie didn’t have to look to see what was in it: a treble espresso. Shotsy ran the handbag and accessories department, lived for fashion, and was only ever seen putting two things in her mouth: strong cigarettes and black coffee.

‘Here’s not so bad,’ said Charlie, smiling at Shotsy.

‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Dolores, going to get more milk for her coffee.

‘Have news for you,’ Shotsy said in a whisper to Charlie.

‘What?’ Charlie could tell from Shotsy’s frown that it wasn’t good news.

‘Later,’ mouthed Shotsy.

Shotsy waited until Dolores–not known for discretion–had gone before spilling the beans.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Shotsy whispered, ‘but I’ve heard that David met Stanley DeVere last week.’

Charlie gasped out loud. ‘You sure?’ she said.

DeVere’s was the country’s premier department store, a high-end chain with branches in five Irish cities and three of the biggest shopping centres. They stood for money. Big money. Stanley DeVere was the complete opposite of David Kenny: a wearer of loud stripey suits, he thought that waving an unlit cigar around somehow enhanced his image as a bon viveur. Charlie had only ever seen him on television and she’d disliked him on sight. It was no secret that DeVere’s would love another store on the high-density east coast of the country, and buying out Kenny’s, with its fabulous location and its reputation as the country’s only bijou department store, would be a real coup for them. It was also no secret that David disliked Stanley DeVere and had vowed that he would never sell Kenny’s.

Meeting Stanley undermined that vow.

‘Why? I thought Kenny’s was doing well?’ Charlie said.

‘Margins, I expect,’ said Shotsy sadly. ‘It’s all about margins. We can’t compete with the likes of DeVere’s on price. They’re buying ten times as much stock as we are, so they get much better deals from retailers. And the supermarkets, the big chemist chains and home-furnishing outlets are hurting us too. We can’t match anyone on price any more. Our saving grace is that we’re a niche store. Take Organic Belle, for example. They’re after exclusivity, it helps them with their brand, but one day some huge conglomerate like L’Oréal will buy them out, and then they’ll go global–world domination in every store. When that happens, we’re in trouble. So, we’re not doing well and the global turndown hasn’t helped. Who has money for luxury nowadays?’

‘This is awful,’ said Charlie.

‘At least we heard about it. Forewarned is forearmed,’ Shotsy said grimly. ‘DeVere’s have their own handbag buyers and they won’t want to hire me. Too many cooks and all that.’

‘You’re brilliant at what you do, Shotsy,’ protested Charlie.

‘Brilliant means nothing. This is hostile takeover time and no matter what sort of flannel they’ll give us about merging the two companies and how the staff will join up seamlessly, it won’t happen, not when DeVere’s and Kenny’s have such different cultures. People like me will be made redundant. End of story, kaput. I wish we could still smoke inside.’

Charlie stood up, got two empty take-away cups and put one in front of Shotsy. ‘Decant your coffee and come out on to the roof. You can smoke and we can talk.’

‘Thought your mother had put you off nicotine for life?’ said Shotsy, pouring her espresso into the take-away cup.

Shotsy was one of the few people who seemed to understand that Charlie’s mother wasn’t quite the loveable revolutionary glamourpuss she pretended to be.

‘Tough growing up with a mother like that,’ she’d said shrewdly on their first meeting, an event in the shop. ‘She has very strong opinions on everything, your mother.’

Charlie sent her a grateful look. Shotsy wasn’t a member of the Kitty Nelson fan club, won over by the purred ‘dahling’s and the war cry that she’d let her daughters live their lives their own way because it was wrong to inflict archaic moral codes upon them.

‘I can’t stand the smell of smoke,’ said Charlie now, ‘but I need to hear everything and you need cigarettes to get your brain working.’

The roof terrace was far less glamorous than it sounded–a flat area of the store’s roof, surrounded on all sides by slanting mountains of tile. To get there, the women had to climb the back stairs that led past accounts and credit control.

Finally, Charlie pushed the old metal door open and they emerged, panting, into the cool February sunlight. Charlie shivered without a jacket but still waited until Shotsy had a couple of decent drags on her cigarette inside her before asking: ‘What do we do?’

‘Keep our eyes and ears open, and wait,’ said Shotsy.

‘That’s it: wait?’

‘Nothing else we can do. We’re just the worker bees.’

Charlie wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold. ‘If DeVere’s buy us, they mightn’t make radical changes,’ she said hopefully. ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right?’ She thought how much she loved her job; and she was good at it, too. Shotsy was brilliant as an accessories buyer; she understood that women who could never afford to dress head-to-toe in designer clothes still loved having the designer glamour that went with an expensive handbag or a pair of designer sunglasses. How could DeVere’s belittle what the Kenny’s staff had to offer?

‘It mightn’t be broken,’ Shotsy said, stabbing out her cigarette, ‘but they’ll still want to fix it so that Kenny’s isn’t Kenny’s any more. It will become DeVere’s. Branding,’ she added in a low voice, ‘that’s what it’s all about now. People like me are part of the Kenny’s brand, and we just wouldn’t fit the DeVere’s brand. There’s no reason they won’t keep you, though, Charlie.’

‘Except for one thing,’ Charlie pointed out. A horrible idea had just occurred to her. ‘DeVere’s don’t stock Organic Belle. It’s like what you said a moment ago: Organic Belle wanted to keep their brand exclusive, so Kenny’s is the only stockist on the east coast. There’s us and Pathologie in Galway, and then the three Organic Belle shops in Cork and Kerry. And now Harrods. That’s it. I’m sure DeVere’s were furious they couldn’t get it. What if they decide not to stock it out of pique, just to make a point? Or if the Organic Belle people pulled out? What then? I’m out of a job.’

‘There’s making a point and there’s doing business,’ Shotsy said. ‘They’re not stupid.’

‘Getting rid of you would be stupid, but you’re sure they’d do it,’ Charlie retorted.

‘Let’s hold off worrying until we know what’s happening.’ Shotsy rearranged her platinum hair and opened the door to the fifth floor. ‘Just keep your eyes and ears peeled. After all, David’s a good man. He wouldn’t sell out without looking after all of us, would he?’

She didn’t say it with conviction, Charlie thought. David Kenny was a good man and he did look after his staff. But if he needed to sell the department store for some reason, perhaps he mightn’t be able to look after them quite as well as he had in the past.

The rest of the afternoon on the cosmetics floor was mercifully busy so Charlie didn’t have a moment to brood. There were three women who worked in the Organic Belle department and Charlie was always the most popular both with newcomers to the range and with long-standing customers coming back for more. She had a kind of empathy that allowed her to understand how someone could feel nervous walking into an elegant department store and facing the beautifully made-up women behind the counters.

Part of her attraction was that she didn’t fit the traditional vision of stunning beauty usually found manning the counters in cosmetics departments. Yes, her subtle make-up was beautifully applied, thanks to the courses she’d taken when she signed up with Organic Belle in the first place, but she chose never to look too glamorous or inaccessible.

Charlie was petite with a curvy figure, shiny chestnut hair that she wore in a groomed ponytail, a round, smiling face with neat features, and slightly cat-shaped eyes inherited from her mother. However, she didn’t have her mother’s fine-boned face or the fabulous lips that Kitty Nelson painted various shades of red: pillar box, fire engine, crimson. And she’d missed out on the long, elegant legs her mother and sister liked to show off with their high heels, sheer stockings and lashings of attitude.

What she did have was a friendliness that drew people to her.

Her husband was constantly trying to make her understand how important that was, and how long legs, sultry lips and a hand-span waist couldn’t hold a candle to innate kindness.

‘You light up a room when you smile, do you know that?’ he would say to her.

‘Stop it, Brendan!’ Charlie would laugh, and kiss him. But she loved him saying it. She hadn’t known such kindness since her father left.

Growing up with her mother and sister, two fiercely strong personalities, Charlie had often felt like a plump little mouse who’d snuck into the lions’ cage. The lions ensnared people with their glamour and ferocity, and nobody could quite believe that Charlie, who listened far more than she talked, could possibly be related to Kitty and Iseult.

Her champion had been her father, who was just as capable of being the egotistical big cat as his wife and older daughter, but who adored his little Charlotte.

And then one terrible day, when Charlie was fifteen and Iseult was eighteen, he’d packed his bags and left.

‘I’m not leaving you, Charlotte,’ Anthony Nelson told her, extracting tissue after tissue from the box to wipe away Charlie’s tears. ‘I love you, remember that.’

‘But you are leaving,’ Charlie had sobbed.

‘I can’t live with your mother any more, that’s all, Charlotte. I can’t. Lord knows, I’ve tried but she’s destroying me–’ He collected himself. ‘Grown-ups sometimes leave each other, but that doesn’t mean they leave their children. I love you and Iseult. That will never change.’

‘Can I come with you?’

He looked shocked. ‘Kids don’t live with their fathers, Charlotte. They live with their mothers, you know that.’

‘Do they have to?’ she whispered. If her mother heard, she’d explode with anger. The volume of screaming in the house had already been dangerously high for the past hour. It was only quiet now because Kitty had slammed the door to the sitting room and was in there with ‘It’s Too Late’ playing over and over on the stereo, almost drowning out the clinking of the gin bottle. But if she’d crept out and was secretly listening to what Charlie had said, she’d be furious…

‘I will never say anything bad about your mother to you, Charlotte,’ her father said urgently, holding her hands in his. ‘She loves you both and, Lord knows, your mother has enough passion in her, so when she loves, she really loves. I hate men who try to discredit their wives when they split up. Your mother is an amazing woman; look at all she’s done, look at what she does for you.’

Charlie thought of her friend Suzy, whose mum would sit on her bed at night and ask about her day, then she would tell Suzy how much she loved her and how proud she was of her. Charlie would have liked that, but it wasn’t the sort of thing Mum did. Plus, Mum despised Suzy’s mother.

‘The woman’s a nightmare! I don’t know why you have to pal up with Suzy. She’s such a milk-and-water child. Oh, I give in. Go to her house, if you must–but when I come to pick you up, be waiting at the gate for me. I refuse to be subjected to her drivel about how fabulous Suzy is and how they’re all going camping or something ghastly for their holidays. Who the hell goes camping? Well, we girls camped that time in Paris–but that was different. We were part of the Women and Power demo, and we were broke.’ There followed a litany of fun had at the time, including a night in Montmartre with a man who chain-smoked Gauloises and said he was going to sculpt her in his version of Marianne, because she was the Celtic Marianne. And oh, there was a fabulous dress shop in a backstreet in the Marais where Kitty had bought a second-hand Schiaparelli dress that everyone just adored. Men dropped like flies when they saw it. Simply dropped.

‘Your mother sacrificed a lot for you girls,’ Dad continued. ‘Don’t forget that. She’d be devastated if she didn’t have you. I wouldn’t dream of doing that to her.’

He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and Charlie could tell he was thinking how ungrateful she was. He was right, her mother must be wonderful, really. Children didn’t leave their mothers. That was a sin. Being a mother was hard, and if a mother screamed sometimes, it was because she had kids who drove her to it. So Charlie was a bad person for even thinking of leaving her mother.

She looked at her father and saw his eyes were wet. Just then, she felt a bit of her curl up and die. She’d revealed something bad to her darling dad and he was upset with her. She felt so ashamed.

‘I love you, Charlotte,’ he said as he left.

Charlie had nodded and said nothing. She daren’t, in case she started to cry. Telling the truth couldn’t be good when what you felt inside was so bad.

When she was twenty-four, she’d met Brendan and he’d changed everything. He’d made her feel treasured and special. From their first meeting, she’d known he was the love of her life. Accustomed to her mercurial home where tension ratcheted up and down at speed, spending time with Brendan made her see that people could be calm and kind to each other. Nobody in Brendan’s home screamed at anyone else because they were randomly in a bad mood.

Six months after meeting, they moved in together. A year later, they were married.

‘You’re throwing yourself away,’ her mother had said furiously. ‘He’s only a bank clerk. He’ll never amount to anything.’

But it’s not his job to amount to something on my behalf, Charlie had thought but never said. Surely that was the very tenet of her mother’s much-vaunted campaigning: there was no use pretending to be Cinderella and waiting for the prince to arrive. You had to be your own prince.

She had a good job in the phone company. Together, she and Brendan had enough money to put a deposit on a house. Together they could do it. Now her mother was saying that together wasn’t the key: Brendan had to be able to support the pair of them all on his own for it to count.

She’d given up work when Mikey was born, another bombshell.

‘You can’t give up work now! What’s wrong with using a crèche?’ demanded Kitty.

‘It’s expensive. I’d be going to work purely to pay for the crèche, and paying the crèche so I could work. It’s a vicious circle. We’ve decided that I’ll stay at home until Mikey goes to school, that’s all.’

‘Your career will be ruined! Have I taught you nothing!’

As it turned out, Charlie’s career hadn’t been ruined, though when Mikey had started going to school, she’d looked for work with more than a little trepidation. After all, who would want to employ her? When the phone company told her they had no vacancies, it seemed her mother had been right. But Organic Belle, a fledgling company, was willing to take her on. It transpired that Charlie had a gift when it came to selling cosmetics. She had done so well that a year ago they’d appointed her supervisor for the Organic Belle range, which meant more money and more responsibility. Charlie loved her new role.

Brendan, too, had moved up the promotion ladder, but the bank had yet to make him a manager, which was about the only job his mother-in-law would have respected.

Mikey was the centre of their lives. As he grew, Charlie grew too, realising that while she wasn’t precisely the high-performing career woman her mother desperately wanted her to be, she was the most special person in the world for one little boy and for his father, and actually, that was all that mattered.

Motherhood taught her to trust her instincts. And it taught her another lesson she’d quite like not to have learned: that there were many ways to be a mother and that letting children feel their mother had sacrificed her fabulous life for them was probably not top of the list. That thought simmered away in the recesses of her brain. A person could be wonderful at one thing, say campaigning for women’s rights, and yet be hopeless at another, like being a kind and caring mother.

There was no law to say a person had to be both. One was enough. But understanding one’s own abilities in these areas was a vital part of life. Charlie had been raised to the independent woman ideal but had found that parenting was the career that fulfilled her most. What hurt was having her mother treat this important part of Charlie’s life with such disdain.

When there was a lull in business, Charlie took a moment to ask Karen, the woman she was training, how she was getting on. Charlie enjoyed working with trainees: there was a buzz from being with someone learning about Organic Belle, particularly when they were doing as she’d done and rejoining the workforce after having children.

Karen was forty and still very anxious about her new job, even though she’d worked as a personal assistant to a high-powered businessman before she’d left to have children.

‘That was then, this is now,’ she said to Charlie. ‘Ten years is a long time to be out of the workforce. I feel like I’m masquerading as a person with a job. I half expect customers to tell me to get out from behind the counter and fetch a real salesperson to help them.’

‘You’re great at this,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re good with people too. I felt the same when I started; I was just as nervous.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Charlie, but you’re only saying that,’ said Karen, still anxious. ‘There’s no way you were nervous. Look at you: you’re so calm and professional about this. I’ll never be like you.’

‘Trust me,’ Charlie said, ‘I was just as nervous. If you don’t believe yourself, Karen, believe me, and I’m telling you that you’re well able to do this.’

When Karen had gone to serve a customer, it struck Charlie as strange that the people who worked with her thought she was calm and professional, while her mother thought she was dithery and unambitious. It was the family box syndrome: your family put you in a certain compartment when you were small and, once you were in it, you weren’t supposed to leave–not in their minds, anyhow.

Charlie had been stuck in the quiet, will never make anything of herself box, and that’s where she was supposed to stay.

Well, now she’d decided she wasn’t staying in any box, for anyone.

Today was her late shift at work, which meant Brendan would pick Mikey up from his friend’s house at six and together they’d make dinner. Brendan was teaching Mikey to cook and they were slowly working their way through a Jamie Oliver book. In fact, Mikey showed great flair for cooking and was improving at such speed, he’d soon be better than his dad.

‘Dad, like this–’ Mikey had said the night before, taking one of the sharp knives and cutting a courgette slowly but expertly. ‘You do them all sideways. They’re supposed to be straight, all the same.’ Mikey was dark like his father, with big hazel eyes and spiky hair that fell over his forehead as he worked. His tongue stuck out a little as he concentrated on slicing the courgettes, and that, combined with the intensity on his young freckled face, made Charlie’s heart contract. He was growing up so fast.

‘When you get your restaurant, we’ll go there every night,’ Brendan said proudly.

‘If you do,’ replied Mikey, still busy chopping, ‘you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I have to make money!’

‘Right then, we’ll join the huge queues waiting to get in,’ Charlie suggested.

Mikey considered this. ‘No, it’s all right, you can skip the queue.’

‘Why?’ demanded Charlie, ruffling his hair. ‘Because we’ll be too old and wrinkly and will ruin the look of the place?’

Mikey giggled, a big smile creasing up his face and making his eyes dance. ‘No. OK, you can eat for free.’

‘Same deal as here, then,’ his mother laughed. ‘Everyone eats for free.’

They were making a beef stew tonight and Charlie was looking forward to it. To add to the whole thing, she’d bought some apple struedel in the food hall and there was cream in the fridge. No matter how enormous the main course, Brendan and Mikey were always like wolves for dessert. Mikey had shot up in the past year, was nearly as tall as his father, and could eat to Olympic standard and still remain lanky.

It was after seven when she reached her car, a battered Citroën she was passionately attached to despite its decrepitude. Throwing her bag in, she switched on the heater to take the February chill from the air, and then phoned home.

‘Hi, love,’ she said as Brendan answered. ‘How was your day?’

‘Hello, Charlie. Oh, you know: the usual. It’s over, that’s the thing. How was yours?’

Charlie thought of the news Shotsy had imparted. She usually told Brendan everything–well, almost everything. She lied by omission sometimes when it came to her mother because Brendan wouldn’t stand for some of the things Kitty said. But tonight, she didn’t want to ruin their evening telling him about DeVere’s. She’d tell him tomorrow or at the weekend, perhaps. ‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘Has Chef started?’

‘Braising beef as we speak.’

‘He’s amazing,’ she said in wonder. She knew so many people with teenage sons who talked about them as if they were juvenile delinquents-in-waiting, and here she and Brendan had this wonderful son who cooked them dinner once a week. Sure, he grumbled sometimes, and left smelly socks and cycling kit all over his room and was totally deaf when he was at his PlayStation, but he never shouted that nobody understood him or told his parents he hated them, which was apparently the norm. Charlie felt so lucky when she thought about her beloved Mikey. ‘I didn’t know how to braise beef when I was thirteen,’ Brendan said.

‘Nor me,’ Charlie agreed. Hardly a surprise, she thought, given that cooking wasn’t at a premium in the Nelson household. ‘And I may never have to again, now that Mikey’s doing it all the time.’

‘He’s better at cooking than both of us,’ Brendan added ruefully. ‘Did you get anything for dessert?’

‘You only love me because I work beside Kenny’s food hall,’ Charlie teased.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Yes, greedy guts. I love you.’

‘Love you too. You’re on your way?’

‘Yes, just leaving.’

‘Drive carefully.’

Charlie hung up and then deleted the missed call symbol on her phone. Her mother had phoned twice. Once at five minutes to three and again half an hour later. Staff on the floor at Kenny’s weren’t supposed to have their mobile phones on their person during working hours unless there was a specific reason for it. So Charlie, along with most people, left hers in her locker with her bag. Brendan, Mikey, and Mikey’s school all had the direct line into the Organic Belle department, and could reach her in any emergency. The only person, therefore, who left urgent messages on her mobile was her mother.

‘I’m at the doctor’s surgery, in the waiting room. I felt faint and I got a taxi to take me. There’s a long queue, mind you. But I’m sure Dr Flannery will see me quickly. He knows my heart’s not good, and that’s more serious than what’s wrong with most of the people here. Call me when you have time. I may need a lift home.’

Charlie felt the familiar tightening of her temples that foretold a massive tension headache and wondered if she had any ibuprofen in her handbag. Only her mother could leave such a message, dismissing everyone else’s ailments as nothing compared to hers, with the entire surgery waiting room listening.

The second message was more succinct:

Dr Flannery wants to do cholesterol tests on me. He’s worried. So am I. I knew this morning that something wasn’t right. I’ll be at home if you can spare the time to phone.

Charlie clicked off, then switched the phone off totally. Was that what Shotsy meant when she said ‘detach with love’? Charlie wasn’t sure. Between the news about DeVere’s and her mother’s double volley at both ends of the day, Charlie felt wrung out. She wanted to go home, eat dinner with her darling family and not talk to anyone else. What she didn’t want was to be at the beck and call of her mother. Was that too much to ask?

4

When you’re annoyed, don’t speak from that place inside yourself that nurtures all past hurts. That will just make it all worse.

Friday was Valentine’s Day. Passing a man carrying a big bouquet of red roses on her way to work, Ingrid thought of her daughter getting ready to go to Lizzie’s wedding. At the television studios, the security guard on reception was hauling a big bag of fan mail with red envelopes spilling out of the top, through the inner security doors to the offices.

‘Valentines for Ken Devlin?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know what they see in him,’ muttered the guard, panting. ‘He’s got a face like a robber’s dog. And he’s a midget, you know. Five foot two is all. A midget. Looks taller on television, of course.’

Ingrid nodded noncommittally, thinking of Marcella. One person’s midget might be another person’s love god.

It seemed there was no escaping St Valentine, even in the office. The Politics Tonight team was divided into two camps: those who thought Valentine’s Day was a ruthless marketing ploy by flower shops and card-makers, and those who saw it as an expression of pure romance to have love declared in public with the gift of flowers or chocolates.

Ingrid found that where people stood on the matter largely depended on their current experience with the opposite sex. Martin, one of the producers, was in the throes of a vicious divorce and was muttering grimly about having been nearly knocked off his racing bike on his way into work by a fleet of flower delivery vans.

‘Waste of time and money,’ he was heard to snap. ‘It’s not as if it even makes any difference. Buy her flowers, cut your wrists, whatever! Like the bitches actually care.’

Ingrid had enormous sympathy for Martin because reliable rumour had it that his wife had hired one of the country’s top divorce lawyers, a woman whose motto was ‘Take him for everything he’s got.’ It wasn’t a snappy motto, but it worked. Outraged ex-wives were queuing up to hire her.

Meanwhile, Jeri, the show’s production assistant, was deeply in love with a new man she’d met on a blind date–a teacher, who was ‘…kind, funny, has a dog and does triathlons!’ She was walking around in the glorious haze that only came from receiving a public display of affection that showed the people she worked with that she was Someone’s Special Person.

‘Twenty-four red roses,’ whispered Gloria, Ingrid’s personal assistant, ‘and a teddy bear holding a red satin heart that says I Heart U.’

‘Gorgeous,’ said Ingrid with pleasure. She hoped it would last. Jeri was a sweet girl and deserved someone nice.

‘Wait till you see your bouquet,’ Gloria added.

Ingrid was surprised. David didn’t normally go in for the whole red roses schtick.

‘Unless it’s your secret lover,’ Gloria went on, seeing the surprise on her boss’s face. ‘I just assumed they were from David–’

Ingrid burst out laughing. ‘Secret lover, indeed! Where would I find the time, Gloria? And can you imagine the fun the political parties would have if I did have a man hidden away somewhere? They’d never answer a question of mine again–they’d be too busy smirking at me on-air, ready to say “Don’t ask me anything, Ms Fitzgerald, until you tell viewers where you were last Saturday…”’

Gloria giggled.

Ingrid’s first thought on seeing the arrangement of creamy Vendella roses was that only a secret lover with exquisite taste and pots of money would send flowers so beautiful. Displayed in a cut-glass vase, with pale pink crepe tissue and a hand-tied satin bow around them, they were lovely.

She surprised herself at how touched she felt as she read the card: Happy Valentine’s Day, love David.

She hadn’t got him anything; they rarely exchanged cards or gifts today. David wasn’t prone to romantic gestures, and, anyway, romance shouldn’t be confined to one day in the calendar, Ingrid felt, a theme she’d elaborated upon many times. And yet here she was, feeling as moony as a teenager at the sight of her beautiful bouquet.

David was amazing. He could still surprise her after all these years.

She wished she could meet him for lunch to say thank you, but she was seeing her sisters today. They met up every month for lunch and she couldn’t let them down.

But she could make a special dinner tonight, perhaps ask Mrs Hendron, their housekeeper who came twice a week, to buy some fish so that Ingrid could make her special fish pie, which David adored but which she rarely made any more because it took so long and was so fiddly. She phoned David’s direct line in Kenny’s and Stacey, her husband’s assistant, answered.

‘Hello, Stacey,’ Ingrid said, surprised. David’s personal line was sacrosanct. It was unusual for anyone else to answer

‘Hello, Ingrid,’ Stacey trilled. ‘Mr Kenny’s at a meeting. He won’t be long now, I’ll tell him you rang as soon as he gets back.’

‘Oh, not to worry,’ Ingrid replied. ‘I just wanted to thank him for the flowers.’

She felt that shivery thrill again, and it was a lovely feeling. The man in her life had sent her flowers. Was she finally turning into a girlie-girl in middle age?

‘Did you like them?’ Stacey asked eagerly. ‘They’re part of the new range in the last-minute gift department, came in last week and I hear they’re flying off the shelves today. It was all Claudia’s idea. That girl is a marvel. She’s only been with us a few months and she’s smashing, worth her weight in gold. She insisted all the men send the flowers to their wives,’ Stacey went on guilelessly.

Ingrid recovered in an instant. ‘Yes, they’re lovely,’ she said automatically. ‘What a marvellous idea of Claudia’s.’

‘She’s so young and so sparky, and she never stops,’ Stacey went on. ‘Here till all hours at night, working on new stuff. I don’t know what Mr Kenny would do without her.’

‘No, me neither,’ Ingrid replied.

She found it hard to concentrate on work that morning. At the pre-production meeting for the next night’s show, a special weekend broadcast because of the by-election, all the talk was about what the wrong result would mean for the government. Old surveys and political swing sheets were reprinted, and comparisons were made with the last time the government had lost a by-election. Ingrid found her mind drifting aimlessly, running back over David’s strange mood and the flowers sent, ostensibly, by Claudia. Something felt not quite right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

David loved her, she knew that, but he was anxious about something and not sharing it. He wasn’t the sort of person to cheat on her with someone else. She’d bet her life on that. But there was something.

It was tied up with the store and he was keeping it to himself. She knew business had been tough over the past year. She was a director of the company, albeit not an active one, so she’d seen the profit and loss accounts. But if there had been a serious problem, David would have called a directors’ meeting and she’d have been invited, along with Tim, the company’s chief financial officer, and Lena, marketing director. And he hadn’t.

‘Men!’ she muttered.

‘Ingrid?’

Everyone around the coffee-ringed meeting table was staring at her.

‘Just remembered that the computer repair man is due at my house today,’ she improvised.

Everyone nodded. Repair men and their cosmic black-hole schedules: they all understood.

Ed, the director, put in his own story about the dishwasher repair man who needed wooing to get him to come at all.

‘That’s what you get when you have a fancy dishwasher with two separate compartments,’ teased Jeri.

Finally, the meeting ended.

Ingrid had plenty of work to do, but she couldn’t imagine doing it while her mind was elsewhere.

She dumped her stuff on her desk and picked up her bag. ‘Gloria, I’m going to lunch early.’

‘With your sisters?’ Gloria had met Flora and Sigrid many times. They were nothing like Ingrid, of course: she was unique. But they were lovely women, with enough of the Fitzgerald eccentricity for Gloria to see where it had come from.

‘Yes, I might be late back.’ Ingrid had a plan: she’d drop into Kenny’s after lunch. There was nothing urgent she had to do, nothing that couldn’t wait till tomorrow, broadcast day. And this was…well, it felt like an emergency.

All the way down to Ardagh, Ingrid kept the radio turned up loud to a talk show because she couldn’t quite bear to be alone with her thoughts. But they invaded her mind anyway. It was that niggling feeling she’d had for weeks now that something was wrong with David.

Ingrid never acted on impulse: she was thoughtful, careful, considered. But not today.

She knew about Claudia. David never kept anything about Kenny’s from her. Claudia was second-in-command to the unflappable Lena, who ran the company development office. Lena’s job was to come up with new marketing strategies for the business and to protect their core brand. If anyone had an idea, they went to Lena and she made sure it passed the Kenny’s branding test.

Claudia had been hired to strengthen Lena’s team. Ingrid could recall the recruitment process, with David poring over CVs in their living room. Ingrid loved reading curriculum vitaes: to her, they were glorious pictures of people and their lives.

‘I didn’t know anyone still listed “hang-gliding” in their Interests section,’ she’d said, leafing through them, fascinated. There had been a time when everyone professed to like sky-diving, deep-sea diving and reading out-of-print French novels in the hope it would make them sound more interesting. But now the interests tended to be more realistic, and if someone put ‘travelling round India on a bike’, chances were, they’d actually done it. Unlike the mythical sky-diving.

‘Show me.’ David peered through his glasses at the CV in question. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t like him. Too cocky. Didn’t say thanks to Stacey when she brought in the coffee.’

Ingrid laughed. If only the guy had been trained by Marcella, he’d have known that how he treated the people who weren’t theoretically important was a very useful tool in grading candidates. Being rude to the person serving tea was fatal. She’d never hire someone like that.

‘Now she was good,’ David went on, finding another CV and passing it to Ingrid.

Claudia Mills was twenty-eight, with a masters in marketing and another in business development. She’d worked in the States for a year and was keen to move back home.

‘Pretty,’ Ingrid said, admiring a professional colour photograph of a dark-eyed girl with a knowing expression, a glossy brown bob and shiny lips. ‘Sexy too.’

‘You’d have to ask Lena that,’ David said without pausing. ‘She notices if they’re cute-looking, I just watch out for who can do the job.’

David had never cheated on her in his life. She’d never worried for even a moment on that score. But the notion that the newest member of staff had insisted that everyone, including the boss, send their wives flowers on Valentine’s Day, set Ingrid’s sensors on full alert. Only someone flirtatious or very sure of her position in the company would do such a thing. What’s more, it was a calculated insult to the women involved: like saying, ‘Your husband wouldn’t think of doing it himself, but I asked him to send flowers to you.’ A very subtle insult, but an insult all the same.

Ingrid’s sisters, Sigrid and Flora, were ten and twelve years older respectively. She’d been the baby of the family, an adored ‘accident’ who’d grown up feeling loved and surrounded by kindness.

Flora’s passion in life was music. She taught piano and lived in blissful happiness in a cottage in Wexford with Brid, a violin teacher. Flora had been married, had three grown-up children, and had stunned them all when she’d left her bemused husband, Paul, for Brid.

She was fifty-five then; now, on the final approach towards seventy, apart from a dodgy back, she said she’d never been happier. The children came to visit with their children, her grandchildren, Paul came round every Tuesday for dinner, and Brid and Flora were planning to accompany a group of adult music students to Rome in April. Life was good, she said.

‘We’re going to a special Mass in the Vatican, too,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait.’ Brid’s cousin, who was a priest at the Irish College in Rome, had organised it. Neither Flora nor Brid seemed to find it in any way odd that two women living very much outside the rules of the Church should visit the Holy See, for all its vehement disapproval of lesbian relationships.

But then, Ingrid knew that nobody was likely to throw them out of the Vatican since they looked for all the world like two genteel music teachers whose idea of a good time was a bit of Mozart followed by a mug of cocoa.

She was careful not to say this in Flora’s hearing, for anyone who leapt to such conclusions would be told in no uncertain terms that Flora and Brid enjoyed a perfectly healthy sexual relationship, thank you very much: ‘Why do young people think that they invented sex?’ she once protested over dinner. ‘It’s like playing the piano, you get better with practice and though you mightn’t have as much stretch in your fingers as you get older, you’ve got the technique to make up for it.’

David had choked on his soup the night Flora had said that.

‘Do you think they’re still at it?’ he’d asked Ingrid later.

‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘We are, aren’t we?’

Sigrid had the family dodgy back too, but she refused Flora’s litany of fabulous new osteopaths and kept supple with yoga.

Yogalates was her latest fad, although she had to travel to Dublin once a week for classes and all that driving was playing havoc with her sacroiliac joint.

Sigrid’s only complaint was that TJ, her husband, had no interest in keeping supple and was going to fuse to his old armchair one day from sitting in it and listening to horse racing on the radio.

‘If I were to drop dead tomorrow, he’d have to look at the Racing Post to see what time he could bury me between races,’ she said, but it was a joke. Both Flora and Ingrid knew that if anything happened to Sigrid, TJ would follow her into the grave within the week. They might mutter and moan at each other, but they were practically joined at the hip.

The sisters sat in the Speckled Trout pub at a corner table beside a roaring fire, and looked at the menu in between catching up on the gossip of the past month.

‘Brid and I named stars after each other for Valentine’s Day,’ Flora said proudly, when the waiter had left.

‘How gorgeous!’ said Sigrid, delighted. ‘I should get TJ to name a horse for me! You can do that, you know, name horses–you just have to put up some money for the training. Not that we could, or anything, but still–’

‘That’s lovely, Flora,’ Ingrid said, conscious of that whiplash of anxiety again.

Her nearly-seventy-year-old sister was getting better Valentine’s Day gifts from her lesbian lover than she was, and the comparison was making her sad. But why? She had no time for Valentine’s Day commercialism. Never had. But thinking she’d been given something wildly romantic had stirred up the desire in her for such gifts. If David was going to send her flowers, he should have done it off his own bat.

When lunch was over, she drove to Kenny’s and parked in the store’s public car park instead of using the staff one. Without quite knowing why, she wanted to see David at work without him knowing she was coming.

She entered the shop through the front entrance and let the whole Kenny’s experience flow over her.

‘Red is gorgeous on you!’ she heard a woman in a flowery shirt sigh to her friend as they stood in front of one of the cosmetics counters. The friend was wearing a slash of shiny red on her lips and was looking aghast at her face in a small mirror.

‘No, it’s desperate!’ She began wiping it off at high speed.

‘Bright red is hard to wear,’ came the gentle voice of the woman behind the counter. ‘This beigey pink would be nice with your skin tones, and not so dramatic.’

Snippets of conversation floated around her.

‘Where’s the food hall?’

‘I’m looking for those suck-it-all-in knickers? What floor they are on?’

The scent of Kenyan coffee mingled with all kinds of perfume, and from every corner of the store, Ingrid could hear chatter, laughter and murmured thank yous as people were handed back their credit cards and the store’s subtle cream paper bags with the gold font that spelled Kenny’s in elegant Art Deco lettering.

She hadn’t been here for ages, she realised. It had become David’s work, the same way the television studios were her ‘work’. A place where they spent huge chunks of their lives separately. She felt guilty at that. No wonder he wasn’t talking to her about the store: she’d removed herself from it and he probably felt he couldn’t talk to her about it.

Quietly, she entered the back part of the store and made her way upstairs to David’s suite of offices.

The door to Stacey’s office was open, as was David’s. No sign of illicit meetings there.

‘Ingrid,’ said Stacey delightedly. ‘How lovely to see you. I was just making coffee for David, would you like some?’

‘No thanks,’ said Ingrid, smiling and walking into her husband’s office. He was at the big table where he sometimes had meetings and there were lots of papers spread out on the polished walnut.

‘Ingrid,’ he said, pleased, ‘what brings you here? Isn’t it your day for lunch with Flora and Sigrid?’

He put out his arms to give her a kiss, and Ingrid felt some of her apprehension melt.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I thought I’d drop in on the way back. I haven’t been here in ages.’

‘Stacey’s making coffee,’ he added, going back to his papers.

‘I wanted to thank you for the flowers,’ Ingrid went on. ‘The roses. I’ve heard the flowers were Claudia’s idea,’ she said evenly.

‘Were they nice?’ David asked absently, head still bent over his paperwork.

Ingrid would have growled if she’d been able to, so she said nothing. The silence worked.

David’s head shot up and he looked at her inquisitively. ‘You all right?’

‘No,’ she snapped, keeping her voice low, conscious of the open door. ‘I am not all right. I am your wife and today you sent flowers to my office at the behest of your sparky little girl Friday, Claudia. So no, I am not all right. I am very much not all right.’

Nobody could ever call David stupid. He got it instantly.

‘This is about Claudia?’ he asked. ‘Claudia who works here?’

His look of absolute astonishment was all the evidence Ingrid needed. Nobody could fake astonishment with such utter truth. And Ingrid had seen plenty of people try it in her years as an interviewer. The faintest gleam of bemusement appeared on his face.

‘You’re worried about Claudia,’ he said and she could have sworn he looked relieved, as if there was something else she should be worried about.

The frisson of fear inside her diminished and she felt guilty at having wronged him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘You did,’ he agreed, but he didn’t laugh with her or even hug her for thinking such a thing. ‘Claudia and Lena are so thrilled with the whole “last-minute gift” idea and yesterday Claudia came up with this plan to share how wonderfully it was going, that’s all.’

‘They were lovely flowers,’ Ingrid conceded.

Something was still wrong. David hadn’t said ‘How could you think such a thing?’ or hugged her.

‘What’s wrong? Is it the business? Please tell me, David. Tell me what’s wrong.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Ingrid. Please don’t interrogate me, I don’t need that.’

She never interrogated him.

‘But you’re worried, I can tell. Don’t lock me out.’

He rubbed his eyes as if getting grit out of them. ‘Money’s always a problem, especially in the credit crunch, but we’ll manage, we always do. Now, I need to finish this quickly, love. We can go to the café and have coffee then, if you’d like? I just need another half an hour.’

Ingrid shook her head. ‘I have to go back to work. I was going to make us fish pie this evening?’

His face lit up. ‘Great.’

Ingrid wandered round the store for half an hour before she left. She still felt guilty for not having been there lately, and she couldn’t help but want to set eyes on Claudia, just to see.

Kenny’s was a real jewel, she realised, walking through the home department with its carefully chosen pieces. The shop couldn’t compete with the big department stores in the area, so they’d specialised in things you simply couldn’t get elsewhere. There was unusual china, the gorgeous pottery with indigo glazes, wooden lamps with bases of carved flowers, Tiffany lamps held up by brass fairies, and the Bluestone Tapestries that Ingrid adored, even though they were worlds away from the sort of decor she normally liked.

A woman with a baby in a buggy stood in front of the tapestries, fingering a large mermaid one with longing. Ingrid could remember when Molly and Ethan had been babies, and she’d had so little time to meander around shops. She felt a strange yearning to have that time back again, and she’d do it differently. Make more time to meander, like this woman with her baby.

But she’d always been so busy, trying to fit work and housework into a day that was still only twenty-four hours long.

The woman with the baby turned and caught Ingrid’s eye.

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she sighed, meaning the tapestry. ‘But a bit expensive for me.’

‘I love them too,’ Ingrid agreed. ‘I’ve actually got one in my hall.’

‘Lucky you,’ said the woman.

Yes, thought Ingrid, lucky me.

5

Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.

Lizzie’s wedding morning was bitterly cold. Unusually low temperatures for the time of year, the radio weather forecaster said chirpily as Natalie and Molly sat beside the range in Natalie’s parents’ farmhouse.

Natalie was waiting for her stepmother’s porridge, which was slowly cooking on the range and tasted very different from anything she ever heated in a microwave in her flat.

Molly was foolishly having toasted home-made bread: foolish because a trio of dogs sat at her feet, making hungry, abandoned expressions and drooling.

‘I did tell you,’ Natalie said. ‘They think it’s their toast, not yours.’

‘They’re sweet,’ said Molly, who was a sucker for big brown eyes.

The back door opened and both girls could feel icy cold rush into the kitchen.

It was Des, Natalie’s dad, and even he was rubbing his hands together with cold.

‘This cold would take the balls off a brass monkey. I hope Lizzie’s wearing a blanket today,’ he said, going to the range and holding his hands over it.

‘Dad, you know how stubborn Lizzie is,’ Natalie said. ‘This is her Valentine’s fairytale and she’s refused all suggestions about wraps and fake-fur throws. She’s going to look like a princess, no matter how cold.’

‘Being covered in goosepimples isn’t going to look very nice in the photos,’ pointed out Molly mildly. She was wearing a vintage woollen dress, a coat and a pashmina to the church, and was already wondering if that was enough.

‘You try telling Lizzie that,’ Natalie said.

‘A bit of a mule, is our Lizzie,’ grinned Des, winking at Molly to show he agreed with her.

Molly loved Natalie’s dad, and she loved going to visit Natalie’s home.

Part of the charm was that it was so very different from her parents’ elegant house with its perfectly designed garden maintained by a gardener who came once a week.

Any grass around Woodenbridge Farm was nibbled low by a pet ram called Sydney who maintained decent lawn standards and ran to greet visitors when they got out of their cars. Sydney had been hand-reared indoors with milk from a bottle with a baby’s teat on it, until he got too big. As a result he thought he was a dog.

The house itself was a small and sturdy stone farmhouse, Natalie’s father’s family home for generations. It was heated solely by open fires and the giant range in the kitchen, with a few gas heaters here and there for people prone to cold.

Staying overnight in winter had made Molly finally realise why Natalie never turned the gas heating on in their flat. Natalie was used to the cold.

‘Here, you put clothes on to go to bed,’ explained Natalie cheerfully. ‘When it’s really cold, you have to bring two hot-water bottles with you, or else let the dogs lie on the bed. I always feel that people who don’t like dogs on the bed have never lived somewhere without central heating.’

All the floors were stone or wood and nobody minded when the three dogs, four cats and the odd chicken wandered in and out, leaving fur or feathers in their wake. The two old couches and faded threadbare rug in the snug living room were originals and not expensive copies trying to give off a country vibe. This was a working farm, with a small herd of beef cattle grown for the Italian market, and no money for any luxuries.

The family ate their own vegetables and the eggs that their hens laid.

The relaxed atmosphere was very beguiling. Bess, Natalie’s stepmum, presided over the house with the easygoing charm of a den mother minding a campful of scouts. She even looked like a den mother: a trim figure always dressed in jeans and long hand-knitted sweaters, her greying hair cut sensibly short as if any messing around with hairdryers or curling tongs was a nuisance she didn’t have time for.

There was always home-made soup or some cold pie in the fridge for hungry people. Bess made scones first thing every morning, and yet she never pushed her food on anyone. She prepared it, then she went off doing things; if people wanted food, they could help themselves to it. As long as they tidied up afterwards, all was well. There was no money for a housekeeper here: Bess did most of the housework and she worked part-time too as a seamstress.

Natalie’s brothers, Ted and Joe–a strapping pair of ‘Irish twins’, so called because they were born less than a year apart–clearly thrived in this atmosphere. Unlike most lads of eighteen and nineteen, they could both cook and were good at ironing. Molly knew her mother would approve. Ingrid hated men who looked helplessly at saucepans when they could reach level ten on Temple of Doom.

When the two girls had arrived the night before, the family had shared a lively dinner. This morning, Natalie had to head off to Lizzie’s house for bridesmaid’s duties. Molly was looking forward to spending the morning going for a long walk around the farm, and perhaps up into the surrounding hills, with some of the Flynns’ tribe of dogs. Sparkles, a wire-haired skinny dog with a limp, had taken a shine to Molly and had been following her around the house adoringly. Despite not being the prettiest dog ever, Sparkles had the most beautiful eyes: soft toffee orbs that stared up at Molly beseechingly until she hauled him on to her lap for a cuddle.

They were all due at the church at three and although Molly wasn’t generally a fan of weddings–they seemed to go on for ever–she didn’t mind this one because she was going to be sitting with the rest of Natalie’s family.

‘Right, I’m off,’ said Natalie, hugging her father goodbye. ‘Off to the O’Sheas’ to see if they’ve all killed each other yet.’

‘Is that one of the rituals of modern weddings?’ her father teased.

‘It will be in Lizzie’s house,’ Natalie said.

She found a parking space in the cul-de-sac where Lizzie’s family lived, and by the time she’d been let into the semi-detached house, she knew she’d been on the money about the fight. As predicted, the O’Shea household was in crisis. There were no teabags or milk, and none of the neighbours squashed into the tiny kitchen for a pre-wedding party seemed inclined to leave the cosiness to buy any. The hairdresser had started work an hour ago and was still only putting the finishing touches to Lizzie’s mother’s hair, which meant she was seriously behind schedule. And the make-up artist hadn’t arrived yet.

‘Will you phone her?’ gasped Lizzie when Natalie came in. Still wearing her fluffy dressing gown, with her hair wet and her face bare, she looked very unlike a fairytale bride.

The make-up lady’s phone went unanswered and Natalie left a polite message.

Half an hour late, not good but not fatal yet.

‘I’ll nip down to the shop to get milk and tea,’ Natalie said.

‘Jesus, no!’ shrieked Lizzie. ‘Get the hairdresser away from my mother. She’s hogging her. It’s my day, not hers. I need to be done now. They can do without bloody tea. There’s a giant bottle of Bailey’s in the kitchen, they can have that in coffee and feck the milk.’

Nearly an hour later, the hairdresser was nailing giant heated rollers into Lizzie’s hair to moans of ‘Ouch, that hurt!’

Anna, who was bridesmaid number two, had turned up and she and Natalie had been tag-phoning the make-up lady every ten minutes. The woman hadn’t replied to either messages or texts.

‘She’s obviously not coming,’ Anna said. ‘We’ll never get anyone at such short notice. What’ll we do?’

‘Don ‘t look at me. You know I’m hopeless with make-up,’ Natalie said.

‘I can do mine, but I’ve never done anyone else’s,’ said Anna.

‘Baileys and coffee anyone?’ roared the mother of the bride from downstairs.

Natalie had a brainwave.

‘Charlie from Kenny’s–she runs the Organic Belle department–she might be able to lend us someone for an hour. She’s lovely, she’d help out, I know.’

Charlie recognised an emergency when she heard one.

‘It’s quiet enough this morning,’ she said. ‘I can’t lend you anyone, but if I take an early lunch, I’ll pop round and do it myself. Will an hour and a half be long enough?’

‘You’re an angel!’ said Natalie gratefully. An hour and a half would get Lizzie and her mother done. Everyone else could fend for themselves.

She went into the bedroom to tell Lizzie the good news and was waylaid by bridesmaid number three, Steve’s sister, Shazza, who’d insisted on being a bridesmaid, and having got her wish had been doing her level best to take over. ‘I think we should all put our hair up,’ she said.

‘What?’ Natalie asked, bewildered.

‘Up, it’s more flattering,’ said Shazza, holding her own blonde hair up to demonstrate.

Shazza had gone against Lizzie’s dictat that spray tans would look ridiculous at a February wedding and was the rich brown colour of an Italian handbag. Everyone else’s skin was pure Irish blue.

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