Once in a Lifetime (48 page)

I don’t tell him who to see. That said, I’d prefer if he was with a woman his own age, to be frank. You’re not going to give him children, are you, no matter how good you look.

You’re too old for that.’

Marcella, who’d faced down fleets of fierce alpha males in the boardroom and chewed up bitchy female types for breakfast, felt close to tears.

‘No,’ she managed to say.

She wouldn’t say she didn’t think she was able to have them now even if she wanted to, no matter how clever Italian fertility doctors were with women well beyond childbearing years. Her grief over not having had babies was her own business, not anyone else’s, not even Lorcan’s mother.

‘You’re quiet,’ remarked Lorcan as they drove off.

Quiet? she thought. If only he knew how hard she’d tried not to run out of the house and hail a taxi to take her away.

‘I’m fine,’ she said tightly, then regretted it. ‘I’m fine’ was classic female hedgehog prickle-time, meaning I am anything but fine and you better find out why that is, you moron.

‘My mother likes you,’ he added.

‘She’s very nice,’ Marcella said. What was she like? Nice and fine. They were non-words, used to pad out a conversation that was going nowhere.

‘Actually, I don’t think she liked me at all,’ Marcella said, unable to hold it in.

‘Trust me, she did. You’d know if she didn’t like you. She made one girlfriend cry.’ He was smiling ruefully at the memory.

Marcella had to control the urge to beat him around the head with her mobile phone. Typical bloody man: they were all martyrs to their mothers, thinking they could do no wrong.

God knows what Antoinette had done to make one poor woman cry. And she was suddenly jealous of this old flame.

Was she younger than Marcella? Or the same age, another cougar in a line-up that made Lorcan’s family shrug helplessly

and wait for the moment he came to his senses and dated women who could give him children.

‘I don’t like feeling disapproved of,’ Marcella blurted out.

Blast him, he had a strange effect on her and made her say what she felt. No man had ever done that before, not even Harry.

‘It’s not a good feeling,’ he agreed. ‘Sort of what you’re afraid of happening to me with your friends, right?’

Marcella gasped. Another thing about Lorcan: he made her totally forget all her neat tricks about presentation. She reacted with him, couldn’t hold anything in. ‘I am not afraid of my friends disapproving of you,’ she lied.

‘Yes you are,’ said Lorcan. ‘I’m not, by the way. I’d like to meet them because they’re important to you, but I’m not afraid of what they think. That’s up to them and we’re up to us. You can’t live your life worrying about what other people think.’

And with that, he was back concentrating on the road, the conversation was over.

He was such a MAN.

Eighteen

Speak out of love and a desire to make things better.

Ingrid had never done nights out with the girls. She hadn’t avoided them on purpose; it was simply an aspect of popular culture that had passed her by.

‘It’s because of who you are, I dare say,’ Marcella said.

‘You’re too famous for normal people and if you went out with a group of famous women, there would inevitably be someone there with an iceberg-sized ego who would want the conversation to be about them, their show, their publicist, their fans.’

Ingrid found herself grinning. Marcella was right. She hated to think of her fame as making her different, but it did. There were people who didn’t care how often your face was on the television and treated you normally, but there were twice as many who did the opposite, asking personal or rude questions on the grounds that famous people had no right to privacy.

Tonight, Marcella had organised an evening with Ingrid and two other women friends, Carla and Nikki, women they both knew and loved.

It wasn’t exactly a wild night out with the girls, but Marcella

said that Ingrid needed to get out and do things that weren’t entirely work-related. Although work was going well and she had slipped back into the driving seat much more easily than she had expected, Ingrid had been avoiding all social events.

‘Your hand will get welded to the Sky Box zapper if you spend any more time at home in the evenings,’ Marcella had scolded. ‘Let me organise something nice and quiet.’

Carla was a high court judge, who was married with three adult children. Nikki was single and a successful clothes designer who’d launched an international handbag line to great success. They were lovely women, good friends, but as she and Marcella sat waiting in the restaurant, sipping Kir Royales, Ingrid felt deeply uncomfortable. It was her first evening out, her first non-family, non-work evening since David had died.

There was something scary about it. The safety blanket that had been her marriage was gone. No, she corrected herself mentally, the safety blanket that she’d thought was her marriage was gone.

Marcella’s BlackBerry beeped with the arrival of a message.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, ‘must reply to this.’

Marcella was distracted, Ingrid thought idly. It must be work.

Ingrid sipped her drink and looked around the room.

An elegant older woman arrived, flicking an arrogant gaze over Ingrid and Marcella as if to say a party of women was beneath contempt.

Ingrid watched the woman with interest as she joined a wealthy-looking elderly man at a nearby table. She was thin, far too thin really; the thinness of savage self-control at every meal for the past twenty years. Ingrid would have been fascinated to see her bone-marrow density scans. The woman was clad in a subtle shift dress with lots of detailing around the arms to distract from the creping of her skin. She had to be over sixty, yet her hair was a girlish blonde bouffant, combed

and fluffed high at the front over a surgically smooth high forehead, with a rounded flicky-out curl all around.

The contrast between the Barbie hair and the rest of her made Ingrid shiver. Was this what getting older was all about?

Fighting age with the weapons of girlhood?

Ingrid’s hand went automatically to her own hair and she had a sudden overwhelming desire to have it all cut off. Short, sharp and sleek a la Judi Dench. That would be different.

Nobody could accuse her of trying to look younger than she was then. Was that where she’d gone wrong in her marriage?

Had she assumed she and David would be together forever when, in reality, she should have faced the fact that nothing lasted forever. Had his mystery lover been younger? Of course.

Ingrid knew she must be ‘Hello,

sorry we’re late. Traffic was mental.’

Carla and Nikki arrived with a tall, grey-haired man beside them.

‘This is Eric Johannsen,’ introduced Nikki. ‘We met him in the lobby.’

Marcella and Ingrid smiled hellos and shook hands with Eric, whom Ingrid tried hard to place.

She’d definitely seen him before. On the business pages, perhaps, a picture in the Financial Times …

He had the keen eyes of a successful businessman, for sure: coolly assessing, analysing, working out where the next billion was coming from.

‘Good evening, pleased to meet you,’ he said.

His accent was neutral with the perfect enunciation of the multi-linguist. Ingrid was always fascinated by men like him, ones who ran empires and could speak Japanese, Chinese and Russian, and had secretaries in every major city, taking speedy dictation.

He lingered only a minute before heading off to his own table, where the inevitable group of men in suits awaited him with bulbous burgundy glasses in front of them.

‘If I wasn’t married …’ murmured Carla, sitting down.

‘Hands off,’ said Nikki. ‘Let us free agents have a chance.’

Nikki had dated a property billionaire from Seattle for a few years but he’d left her for his masseuse. Since then, she’d sworn off men. ‘Isn’t he a dish?’ she asked Marcella.

‘Well, er - yes,’ said Marcella.

Nikki whooped. ‘Marcella Schmidt - you’re seeing someone!

Tell all’

‘I am not,’ protested Marcella.

Ingrid could see that Carla and Nikki believed her. Marcella was, after all, marvellous at fibbing. But Ingrid had seen her blush slightly and knew better. Marcella must have a new man in her life and she hadn’t said anything. Ingrid felt a pang of guilt. Dear Marcella felt she had to pussyfoot around her, as if any good news would devastate Ingrid. That wasn’t true. Just because Ingrid’s life had been shattered didn’t mean everyone had to suffer too.

‘Where do I know that man from?’ Ingrid asked, to take the heat off Marcella.

‘Another billionaire property/business/delete-where-applicable magnate,’ Carla said. ‘I don’t know where Nikki finds them. Is there a dating club for lonely billionaires, Nikki?’

‘I wish,’ Nikki sighed. ‘Money’s not everything, anyway, is it?’

The other three laughed.

‘I’m never interested in men because they have money,’

Nikki claimed. And then she grinned, a wicked little grin.

‘But they’re nicer when they do.’

‘Maybe not nicer, but the push-off-I’m-over-you gifts are better when they’re rich,’ Marcella joked.

Nikki jangled her bracelet, a platinum-and-diamond confection that Mr Seattle had bought her. ‘Doesn’t keep you warm at night.’

‘Eric might keep you warm at night,’ suggested Carla.

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘Last year at a skiing party in Courchevel.’

‘What is he in? Property, the space programme, buying other nations …?’

More laughs.

‘Just your general mega-rich bloke,’ Nikki said. ‘Very nice, actually. Swedish, still has his company’s main base in Stockholm.

Houses all over the place - you know the drill. I didn’t ask what he’s in Dublin for. You know these guys, they hop all around the world in private jets doing deals.’

The waiter appeared with menus.

‘Food, I’m starving!’ said Marcella. She was permanently ravenous these days, something to do with being unable to eat when she was with Lorcan. When she was away from him, she ate like a horse.

The evening was very enjoyable, despite Ingrid’s anxieties over it, and as they left the restaurant, the four of them promised to meet up again next month.

‘Are you OK?’ Marcella asked her quietly when the other pair had gone off in taxis.

‘I’m fine,’ Ingrid said. ‘Tonight was fun, like practising being normal and happy. If I practise long enough, I might remember how to do it.’

‘You don’t have to pretend to be normal and happy,’

Marcella said. ‘It’s all right to be sad.’

‘Not every hour of every day,’ Ingrid said. ‘It’s not good for the soul. But tonight was fun, so thank you.’

Ingrid had been about to ask Marcella to tell her about her new man, but thought better of it. Marcella would tell when she was ready.

The dream woke Ingrid again that night. She was in the front pew of the church, waiting for Molly to walk up the aisle, and she looked across at the groom, seeing him properly for the first time. He looked so like David: the same shoulders, the same look on his face. The groom’s mother, a vision in

pink who was infinitely younger than Ingrid but still blurry, leaned forward in the pew on the other side, and hissed. Looks familiar?

Molly was marrying her half-brother, Ingrid realised, and she tried to shout it out, to tell her daughter to stop, but the words wouldn’t come.

It was at that moment that she always woke up, sweating and distressed.

David couldn’t have done that to her, could he? But perhaps he had. Perhaps there was another Kenny child out there somewhere.

Yet if there was, the child’s mother would have come forward to claim money from David’s estate. Unless David had already set her up with a trust fund or some other type of financial parachute.

It was two a.m. Ingrid switched on her BlackBerry and sent a quick email to Marcella. Need to find out who SHE is.

Have to. Priority. I xx

There was no backing out now.

Marcella didn’t mind playing detective on occasion, but this was different. She wanted to make sure that Ingrid knew exactly what she might be letting herself in for.

‘If anyone finds out what you’re looking for, you’re in deep shit, Ingrid,’ she warned. ‘Imagine that splashed all over the tabloids.’

‘I know,’ said Ingrid. ‘Telly Ingrid’s Love Triangle Tragedy.’

‘Not a bad headline,’ Marcella commented. ‘Right, leave this with me. I’ll have to do some digging myself - this isn’t something I’d trust anyone else with. But Ingrid, are you sure. You’re focusing entirely on finding out who this woman is.

What happens when you know? What are you going to do with this information, assuming I can find out anything?’

‘I don’t know; look at her and wonder what she has that I didn’t have?’ Ingrid replied.

‘And that will be helpful how exactly?’

‘It will give me closure.’

‘You’ve always said you hate all the crap about “closure”,’

Marcella snapped. ‘You used to call it mumbo jumbo and complain that the world’s full of people seeking closure on everything from a bad day at school when they were four to a row with their kids.’

‘That was before I understood what it meant,’ Ingrid snapped. ‘This woman is holding me back. I’ll never stop wondering, Marcella; wondering if every woman in our circle is her, or if he worked with her or if it’s an old flame he went back to. He never told me much about the women before me,’ she added thoughtfully.