Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (51 page)

‘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?’