Stand by Me (18 page)
‘Don’t forget to wear your good suit to the meeting,’ she said as she glanced at his ancient T-shirt with its streak of paint across the shoulders.
‘I won’t.’ Brendan cracked open another beer. ‘Don’t you worry. I scrub up well.’
He came home on Monday with a smile on his face and a bottle of very expensive champagne in his hands.
‘I thought we should celebrate,’ he said as he eased the cork out of the bottle. It didn’t come out as smoothly as he’d expected, and they had to rush to fill their glasses before the golden liquid fizzed on to the kitchen floor.
‘Oh, wow, this is great.’ She laughed as she sipped the drink, suddenly feeling as she had when she’d first met Brendan and she was permanently bubbling with excitement. ‘I do so love champagne.’
‘This is just the start,’ he told her. ‘Delahaye Developments will be tendering for a lot of business in the months to come. There are opportunities out there and I plan to grab them with both hands.’
‘I’d much prefer if you just grabbed me with both hands,’ she said.
His eyes lit up. ‘Where’s Kelly?’
‘Sleepover with Anastasia and Mel. No school tomorrow, it’s an in-service training day.’
‘Well, well, Mrs Delahaye. What perfect timing.’
‘I do my best,’ she teased as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him towards her.
‘I’m glad to hear that it’s all going well for you.’ Gabriel was sitting opposite her at the kitchen table in the family home. He was, thought Dominique, still astoundingly handsome. His hair was slightly too long, but it gave his dark eyes, visible beneath his sweeping fringe, an extra-soulful look. (Emphasised, she acknowledged, by his black suit and dog collar.)
‘The company will make a lot of money in the next few years,’ she said. ‘I’m very, very lucky.’
‘Yes.’ His tone was measured and she looked at him in irritation.
‘There’s nothing wrong with making money,’ she said.
‘I never said there was,’ he protested.
‘I know you,’ she told him. ‘You think that we’d all be better on our knees in poverty.’
Gabriel laughed. ‘I don’t. Really. I truly am glad that things have worked out so well for you, Dominique.’
‘So am I,’ she said. ‘How about you? How’s the parish?’
‘I like it,’ he told her. ‘It’s a great community. A dwindling congregation, unfortunately. So many young people have left over the last ten years. But we do our best. So I’m happy there.’
‘You don’t regret it?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Regret it?’ He spoke quickly. ‘Regret my vocation? How could I?’
‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ she admitted. ‘I told Emma Walsh that thousands of times. I just wondered if sometimes you didn’t think that you were stuck in the arsehole of nowhere ministering to the elderly.’
‘Rossanagh isn’t the arsehole of nowhere,’ he told her.
‘That’s your opinion.’
He laughed. ‘You’re such a Dub. How’s Emma keeping?’
‘Fine,’ said Dominique. ‘She’s happy.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘I always knew she would be.’
‘D’you know everything?’ Dominique teased.
‘I’m a man of the cloth,’ he told her. ‘So . . . yeah!’
This time they both laughed.
‘Would you ever like to come back to Dublin?’ asked Dominique.
He shook his head. ‘I like being away,’ he said.
‘Away from the clutches of the parental home.’
He smiled slightly and she shrugged.
‘I suppose it wasn’t the same for you. They loved you.’ She sighed.
‘Dominique, they loved both of us. They still do.’
‘But not equally.’
‘You’re wrong about that.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t have a connection with Mam,’ she said. ‘I never had and I never will have. It messed me up a bit, and although I understand it now, I can never quite get over you being the favourite.’
‘Ah, Domino. Don’t be so silly.’
‘I can’t help it,’ she said and then smiled at him. ‘But I forgive you.’
‘How’s your own connection with Kelly?’ he asked.
He’d continued to offer to talk to her during her depression. She’d told Brendan that she didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want him preaching at her. It was much easier to talk to her counsellor, Sarah. And to Greg. She didn’t see Greg much after the day when she’d cried on his shoulder. But for a full year after that they talked once a week on the phone, when she shared with him the fears that she simply couldn’t share with Brendan. Over time their phone calls had dwindled. And after Greg got married they stopped altogether, because Dominique knew that it would be impossible for anyone else to understand the bond they shared.
‘We’re great,’ she said warmly. ‘We have fun together and I enjoy being her mother. I can’t honestly say that I’ll ever feel close to Mam and Dad, but I am very, very close to Kelly.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Gabriel. ‘Obviously my prayers for your happiness were answered.’
‘I think in the end happiness has more to do with getting on with it yourself than with prayer,’ she said.
‘But it can’t hurt.’ Gabriel smiled at her.
‘So do you pray for me every day?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
She chuckled. ‘You think it’s your prayer that’s made the business go so well and got us our lovely house?’
‘I don’t pray for material things,’ said Gabriel. ‘There are other things in life too, you know. Everyone needs another side to their existence.’
‘Of course it’s not all about material things,’ she agreed. ‘With Brendan, it’s about being secure, that’s all. And I do have another side. It just doesn’t involve spending time on my knees, that’s all. At least ...’ there was a sudden wicked gleam in her eye, ‘not in prayer, at any rate.’
Which made Gabriel splutter over his cup of tea and reduced Dominique to fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Chapter 9
The following Friday, as she was loading up the washing machine with laundry, she got a phone call from Emma saying that she was at Heuston station and asking if Dominique would like to meet her for lunch.
‘Love to,’ said Dominique. ‘Kelly’s going to drama class after school so I’ve got the time.’
‘I’ll be in Blooms from twelve,’ Emma told her. ‘I’ll see you there.’
Dominique glanced at her watch. ‘It’ll probably be closer to one, to be honest.’
‘No problem,’ said Emma. ‘I’ll wait for you.’
Dominique hung up, added powder to the washing machine and started the cycle. Then she hurried up the stairs and opened her wardrobe doors. She knew that she could never compete with Emma in the up-to-the-minute style stakes, but it was important not to look like a suburban slob, so she did a quick change from her comfortable baggy M&S jeans and fleece into a less forgiving pair of Calvin Kleins and a plain white T-shirt. Despite her slimmed-down silhouette, it was always a struggle to get into the jeans, but Dominique felt it was worth it so that she didn’t appear totally inadequate next to Emma. She told herself, as she always did when she had feelings of inferiority, that she was a perfectly capable woman who always did the best she could. Sarah had taught her that it was OK to feel inadequate sometimes. Greg had taught her that too. But she didn’t want to feel as though she hadn’t tried.
She swirled bronzer across her face, dabbed gloss on her lips and ran a brush through her hair. Then she decanted her bits and pieces from her ancient black handbag to a smaller, neater version. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, awarded herself six out of ten and hurried off to catch the bus.
Emma was sitting in the hotel bar, flicking through a magazine. Her chestnut hair was pulled back into a casual ponytail. She was wearing a light dress and matching jacket in palest lilac, and Dominique could see, as she turned the pages of the magazine, that her nails were perfectly manicured and painted a vibrant red to match the colour of her lipstick. She sighed involuntarily. She would never, ever look as casually sophisticated as Emma, no matter how hard she tried. Emma would always be ten out of ten.
‘Hi!’ Emma smiled. ‘How’re you doing, Domino?’
Dominique grinned in return. Emma used the Delahaye nickname for her all the time now. Naturally. She was part of the family too. Emma Walsh had married Greg Delahaye in a very glitzy wedding ceremony in County Cork a few years earlier. The reception had been a million times bigger and brasher than Dominique and Brendan’s. This was due to the fact that Maura and Norman Walsh were delighted that their daughter was marrying Greg, and were happy to pay for an over-the-top do for her. In fact they’d encouraged her to invite as many people as she wanted. Emma had taken them at their word and pulled out all the stops.
Dominique hadn’t exactly been envious of the glamour that had been on show that day, but she hadn’t been able to help comparing the extravagant floral arrangements, the apparently unending bottles of champagne and the excited, happy speeches with the far simpler event and briefest of speeches that had been her own wedding, and she couldn’t help feeling that the Delahayes were making comparisons too. Emma had looked like a princess in her Pronuptia fitted dress with its long sequinned train and with her hair sculpted around a dazzling tiara that secured an intricate lace veil. Dominique’s dress had been designed to hide her bump and not bestow a princess look.
Dominique had been surprised at first when Greg and Emma announced their engagement. Even though she’d been the one to bring them together, she sometimes thought that Greg was a bit too quiet and home-loving for Emma. And she couldn’t help wondering if her friend was just a bit high-maintenance and party-loving for Greg. But the truth was that she was delighted that her friend and her brother-in-law (who she also considered to be a good friend) had decided to get married, even though it meant that Emma would be moving to Cork.
She said as much to Greg at a family dinner after they’d announced their engagement, and he grinned at her.
‘I never would’ve guessed that I’d meet my future wife at your wedding, Domino. So thank you.’ His voice softened. ‘I know we’re two quite different people. But I also know Emma is the right girl for me. She’s upbeat and chirpy and she doesn’t let me obsess about things. She’s optimistic whenever I’m pessimistic. And I love her.’
‘I’m very glad,’ Dominique said. ‘And I’m even more glad that I brought the two of you together.’
She would have to find another confidante now, she told herself on the day of the wedding as she watched the bride and groom take to the dance floor. Over the years since Kelly’s birth, Greg had been the one she turned to when she was feeling down. She could never feel anything but gratitude towards him for his role in helping her to get treatment for her post-natal depression and his support for her afterwards. He was still a source of support. She never had to pretend with Greg, as she sometimes did with Brendan, that everything was absolutely fine. There were days when she still struggled, but she didn’t want Brendan to know. She didn’t want him to feel that he had made a mistake in staying with her. She didn’t want to be a moaning, complaining, depressing wife.
‘We all struggle sometimes, Domino,’ Greg told her one day when they were sitting in the living room. He’d come to town to take Emma to a concert and had called in to see her while he waited for his girlfriend to finish work. As always Dominique was pleased to see him, even though his visit was unexpected. It had been a tough day, full of small inconveniences (like the dishwasher overflowing and the kettle boiling dry) that had mushroomed in imagined importance as the hours passed, making her feel stupid and useless. She’d vented her annoyance at him and he’d laughed at her so that suddenly she found herself laughing too.
‘How are you so good at this?’ she demanded. ‘Where did you learn?’
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