Better Together (36 page)

She didn’t have time to go home and change. She drove straight to the hotel and immediately went to the ladies’ room. She rummaged in her bag and wished she was more like Talia, who seemed to carry a mini beauty bar around with her and was therefore equipped for every appearance emergency. Talia would’ve had serum to deal with the rain-soaked hair, as well as foundation and eyeshadow to hide the blotchy face and panda eyes of her reflection. Sheridan’s bag, in contrast, contained two mismatched hair bobbles, a Boots No. 7 tinted lip gloss and a bottle of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir (which Talia had given her the previous Christmas).

She dried her hair by crouching beneath the hand-dryer and continuously hitting the silver button for hot air. The effort left her looking like Albert Einstein on a particularly bad-hair day. She pulled a brush through her tangled locks and tied them back with the bobbles. Slightly less scary, she thought, but still very far from the sleek look she’d intended. She then moistened a tissue and wiped some specks of mud from her forehead before slicking on the lip gloss. Finally she sprayed herself with the perfume. Not my finest hour, she thought as she inspected the face staring back from the mirror. There’s no way I look as though I’ve made even the faintest of efforts.

She reminded herself, as she pushed the door opened and headed towards the restaurant, that it wasn’t just about looks. It was about personality too. Though it was hard to see how Joe could be impressed by the personality of someone who had more or less been stalking his father.

There was a part of her that still believed he wouldn’t be there. She hadn’t yet decided how she’d react to that
eventuality – if the thing to do would be to act dismissive and say to the restaurant staff that she’d got the day wrong or something like that. She’d practised various lines to use, but as she stood at the entrance to the softly lit room, she realised she didn’t need any of them. Because Joe
was
there, sitting at a table near the wall, reading a menu.

He looked up as she walked towards him, and then stood to greet her. He was wearing navy trousers, a white open-necked shirt and a casual jacket. His dark hair was lightly gelled, and despite a tiny nick on his cheek from what had obviously been a recent shave, he looked great.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

She looked at him uncertainly as she sat down and apologised for being late. She explained about Conall Brophy and his protest, all the time expecting him to tell her to shut up about some man he’d never heard of and explain instead why she’d turned up uninvited at his father’s house.

Instead, his expression was concerned, and after she’d finished, he said he hoped that things would turn out all right for him.

‘To be honest, I can’t see how,’ said Sheridan. ‘He’s going to lose his house, he hasn’t got a job . . .’ She thought again of how panicked she’d felt when she’d lost her own job. And how devastated she’d been to have to leave the apartment, even though it was only a rental.

‘There are people who can give him advice,’ Joe said.

‘Hmm. Like retrain and learn new skills and all that sort of guff.’ Sheridan had temporarily forgotten her concern about her dinner with Joe as she thought of Conall’s situation. ‘Easy to say, not alway so easy to do. And when he did
try to do something else, the job went to a friend of a friend instead.’

‘I can see how that would upset him,’ agreed Joe.

‘He was very distressed,’ Sheridan said. ‘And now his wife is worried that he’ll have a criminal record, which will prevent him from getting work in the future. It’s terrible,’ she added, ‘how one simple mistake can wreck your life . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she thought of her own mistake. Joe hadn’t referred to it yet. It was impossible that he didn’t know. Surely.

She glanced around the room and felt even more uncomfortable as she realised just how inappropriate her current garb of jeans (still a bit damp from the rain) and sweatshirt was. Almost all the other female diners had dressed up and were looking subtly sophisticated, while the men wore suits, or a least a jacket, like Joe. Nobody else looked like they’d just come in from a tramp around the hillside. She’d known the right thing to wear. Her sexy green dress would have been perfect. But right now she stuck out like a sore thumb.

‘Everything OK?’ asked Joe.

‘Just wishing I’d had time to go home and change first,’ she replied.

‘You’re fine the way you are,’ said Joe.

She smiled nervously. If he was trying to put her at her ease by telling her she looked OK when she knew that she absolutely didn’t, did that mean he was still unaware of her visit to his father’s house? She felt as though she were sitting on an unexploded bomb, expecting it to go off at any moment but not knowing when. Neither did she know if the bomb was ticking. Right now, he seemed far too relaxed to have a
go at her, but how could she know what he was really thinking?

‘It’s good to see you,’ he added.

‘Have you been busy yourself?’ she asked. ‘You were away on business, weren’t you?’

‘Nightmare.’ He poured iced water from a jug already on the table into her glass. ‘Problems at the company I manage, issues with some overseas investors. Got it sorted eventually, but it’s not my favourite way of spending time.’

‘Were you abroad?’

‘Dubai,’ he said. ‘My father has some business interests there.’

Perhaps they hadn’t wanted to bother him while he was away, she thought, even as the mention of his father made her stomach churn. She took a sip of her water and steeled herself to confess.

Before she could speak, a waiter came over and asked if they were ready to order. Sheridan, who hadn’t managed to take in what was on the menu, looked at him blankly and Joe asked him to give them another few minutes.

‘Of course, Mr O’Malley,’ said the waiter. ‘Take as much time as you like.’

‘I think before we eat . . .’ She took another sip of the water. ‘Before we eat, we need to just . . . um . . . there’s something we need to talk about first.’

He leaned forward. ‘This isn’t anything to do with you thinking I’m married, is it?’ he asked.

‘No. No. Of course not.’

‘Whew.’ He relaxed again. ‘I was worried there for a moment.’

‘It’s nothing about you,’ she said hesitantly. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’

‘What? What’s the matter?’

‘I think . . . I think you might have a problem being here with me,’ she said. ‘You might decide that this is a big mistake.’

He continued to look at her, a puzzled expression on his face.

Then she told him, the words tumbling from her lips in a rush. About losing her job in Dublin and blaming Paudie, about her plans to write an in-depth piece about him, about going to March Manor and being mistaken for a taxi driver. As she spoke, his expression grew from puzzled to surprised, to slightly amused and finally grim.

‘So dinner with me tonight was what for you?’ he asked. ‘An opportunity to pump me for details about my family?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Of course not. You asked me and I came because I . . . I wanted to.’

‘But you knew I was Paudie’s son.’

‘Not when you asked me,’ Sheridan reminded him. ‘I thought you were Josh’s dad then. It was only when I went to the house that I realised who everyone was.’

‘What were you expecting when you did that?’ he asked. ‘That my dad would simply say yes to an interview? That he’d tell you all sorts of things he’s never told anyone else so that you could – what – make a name for yourself?’

‘I went to the house on impulse. I really had no idea what I planned to ask him.’

‘And how did you intend to publish whatever you finally wrote?’

‘I hadn’t decided. I just saw it as a way to get back into the mainstream press or perhaps build up a reputation as a freelance journalist. It’s bloody hard, you know, to get a foot
in the door, even for someone like me who should know exactly how to open those doors. Everything I did before was sports related. I wanted to show that I could do something different. That I wasn’t a loser just because I was turfed out of the
City Scope
when your dad invested in it.’

The waiter returned, but Joe waved him away again.

‘Are you blaming my father for the fact that you lost your job?’ Joe sounded incredulous.

‘Well, he has this reputation, you know. Mr Slash-and-Burn, that’s what he’s called.’

‘Not by anyone close to him.’

‘He takes over businesses and gets rid of people,’ said Sheridan. ‘You can’t deny that.’

‘He invests in ailing businesses and turns them around, preserving jobs for most of the employees,’ Joe said.

‘But what about the jobs that aren’t saved? What about the people who’re thrown on the street? The ones he calls dead wood?’

‘It’s hard to lose your job, of course’ said Joe. ‘But everyone would lose their job in a failing company if it wasn’t for people like my father.’

‘Yet people like your dad make loads of money out of it,’ Sheridan reminded him. ‘You see it all the time, these so-called saviours coming in, firing people and then rewarding themselves with huge bonuses. Those bonuses could’ve kept staff working.’

‘You’re a right little socialist, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, please!’ She looked at him, suddenly annoyed. ‘I’m stating a fact. And it’s not that I think we should have a communist state set-up, but there are people who take too much on the back of the work of others, and they live great
lives and don’t have a clue, not a clue, how bloody demoralising it is to send out a million CVs without even a reply, because they’re already cocooned in their luxury offices with jobs that pay them far too much in the first place.’

‘If that’s how you think about my father, I’m guessing you weren’t planning on writing anything very flattering about him,’ observed Joe.

‘I would have done a balanced piece.’

‘Nothing you’ve said to me has been very balanced.’

‘You don’t understand!’ she cried. ‘I’ve seen your father’s house. I’ve seen how you live. Your family has it all. But tonight I met someone who was driven to total despair over his unemployment situation. He nearly burned down the school, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Are you trying to blame my dad for that too?’ asked Joe.

‘No. No. And I know he’s not exactly responsible for me ending up in a place like Ardbawn either . . .’

‘A place like Ardbawn?’ Joe looked at her wryly. ‘You mean a backwater like Ardbawn? Somewhere that doesn’t value your investigative skills? Your passion for a story?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Sheridan. ‘I meant . . . Oh, look, it’s just I had plans, you know? Dreams about what I wanted from my life, from my career. And somehow your father has scuppered them.’

‘So you’re out to scupper him, is that it?’ asked Joe when she lapsed into silence.

‘I thought I could . . . oh, I don’t know, upset him a bit. Let him know how it feels.’ Sheridan pushed a stray lock of hair from her face. ‘I realise that makes me sound completely bonkers. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I didn’t know who you were and that I agreed to meet you for dinner. I’m
particularly sorry I barged into your home last Saturday. But I’m not sorry I was thinking of doing a story, because that’s my job and that’s what I do, and even though I prefer my stuff to be about sports stars not businessmen, I’m proud of it.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Joe.

‘And I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you and tell you about what happened. I thought you would’ve heard from your brother and sister already about me. I didn’t honestly believe you’d be here tonight. I should’ve texted you and cancelled. It would have been better. As it is . . .’ she stood up, ‘I think I should go.’

‘Sheridan . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence.

She had to go before she burst into tears. It was one thing having a private sniffle, but she never, ever cried in front of other people. Least of all men. That was a total sign of weakness. She picked up her bag and took a deep breath.

‘Goodbye,’ she said.

He looked at her thoughtfully and then spoke in a calm, measured voice.

‘Goodbye,’ he said.

She was sure she could hear a trace of anger behind the calm. She couldn’t blame him for being angry with her. She was angry with herself too.

He hadn’t stopped her. Sheridan realised, after she’d left the hotel, that a part of her had half hoped that he would come running after her and tell her that everything was fine, that he understood how she felt, that it didn’t matter, he loved her anyway. Which might have worked well in the romantic movies she enjoyed watching from time to time, but it never
actually happened in real life. In real life what happened was that you got outside and realised that it was now bucketing down with rain, and that in the few seconds it took to get to your car, your hair was getting plastered to your head and your trainers weren’t heavy enough to keep out the deluge.

She was aware, as she sat in the Beetle, that she hadn’t handled events particularly well. She leaned her head on the steering wheel and asked herself why things never turned out the way she wanted, what it was that seemed to mess up her best-laid plans and left her feeling hopelessly inadequate. When she’d first got the job at the
City Scope
, she’d thought that she was travelling a new path; a successful one that would make her parents proud of her. Now she realised that it had only been a diversion, that getting things wrong was her default mode and that Pat and Alice would always regard her as the child they had to worry about.

It took nearly ten minutes before she felt composed enough to start the engine and pull out on to the road. There was very little traffic moving through the town now, the rain clearly having persuaded people to stay indoors. She wondered if it would be worthwhile driving to Kilkenny again to see how things were turning out for Conall and Lorraine Brophy, but she didn’t want to piss off Vinnie Murray. She supposed that proper journalists never cared about pissing people off, but she did. Whenever she interviewed sports stars, she was always polite and understanding, even when she was asking them questions they didn’t especially want to answer. (Matt had once told her that she lacked a killer instinct, that she didn’t go for the jugular or kick a man when he was down. Sheridan couldn’t understand why anyone would want to.)