Stand by Me (29 page)
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Do you want me to come to all your events with you and then shag you in the hotel car park? Is that it?’
He looked startled. ‘I wasn’t quite thinking of it like that.’
‘But now that I mention it?’
‘Hey ...’ He smiled at her. ‘We had some good times when we had sex in the open air.’
He’d stood by her when she was pregnant and stood by her when she’d gone through her depression. He didn’t want to leave her. And the truth was that she didn’t want to leave him either.
Everyone made mistakes, she thought, as she kissed him. It was what happened afterwards that mattered.
It was only when it was all over that Dominique realised how much time he’d been spending away from her and how many functions he’d gone to on his own. Going with him made her feel closer to him again. She was bright and chatty and back to her Dazzling Domino best. Sometimes, as they sat beside each other at a terminally boring dinner (she could understand why he’d looked for something to distract him in these cases), she would allow her hand to slide beneath the table and massage him while at the same time keeping up a conversation with the other guests. She knew he liked that very much. He came home earlier and more often too, and they would regularly go out to dinner or the movies together. On the way home he would sometimes divert into deserted laneways, where Dominique tried to treat him in a way that would make him forget thoughts of any other Miss Valentines who might be lurking in the wings. Deep down she thought that she’d outgrown the days when having sex in the car, or in a field, was an exciting thing. (To be perfectly honest, she preferred it at home in their bed with its crisp cotton sheets.) But if this was something that Brendan liked, then this was what she would do. And it wasn’t that she didn’t find it fun; it was just, she thought, that she’d become far too pampered these days.
She realised that there was more to it than sex. She knew that she needed him to be interested in her and what she did every day too, so that they would have different things to talk about and so that he would treat her as an equal. She became more and more involved in the management and operations of the charities she supported, and she made him get involved financially too. Sometimes her friends would sigh and say that she and Brendan were so lucky to have each other and that it must be great to have such a devoted husband. Dominique was confident that she had made it through yet another rocky patch in her marriage, and confident, too, that the worst would never happen now and Brendan would never leave her. He had too much to lose. And besides, he didn’t want to go.
She’d never heard even a whisper about Miss Valentine on the social scene, even though it was a scene that was regularly rocked by rumours of infidelities among the people they knew. She was happy that there would be no such rumours about the Dazzling Delahayes. She knew that some women would think of her as weak for accepting Brendan’s behaviour and forgiving it. But you had to forgive sometimes. You had to get over things and move on. Both of them had forgiving to do. Both of them had moved on. They’d made the right choice and Dominique, once again, was happy with the person she had become.
It was one of the warmest days of the year, and the women - it was usually mainly women - who’d come to the party were enjoying being able to show off their summer clothes as they moved through the garden like brightly coloured birds. Dominique herself was wearing a soft purple dress with white polka dots, though now, as the party was ending, she’d taken off her matching high-heeled sandals and was standing bare-foot in the tinder-dry grass. Despite her dazzling status, she’d never really cracked high heels.
Kelly, in a strapless floral sundress, was interviewing Norah O’Connell, wife of a local businessman. Dominique watched as her daughter animatedly asked questions of the older woman for the piece that would be broadcast on the radio the following day. She knew that Kelly enjoyed what she was doing and that she desperately wanted a career in radio. Kelly was hoping that during the summer holidays she’d manage to get an exclusive scoop to bring to Countryside FM so that they’d realise how good she was. Dominique thought it was rather sweet that her daughter would think in terms of exclusives and scoops for what was really just a community service station, but she was impressed by Kelly’s determination. Every day she saw her daughter scouring the newspapers and the internet for news-worthy items, and although she hadn’t found anything yet, Dominique felt sure that eventually she would.
‘Hey, Domino!’ Emma walked across the grass towards her. ‘I thought I’d better say goodbye. I’ve got to get home before Jia cracks up altogether.’
Dominique grinned at her. After Emma’s dad, Norman, had died a couple of years ago, she’d had to find someone to help with her gorgeous but hyperactive son, Lugh. She’d been very fortunate in finding Jia, a Chinese girl with an abundance of patience, whom Lugh adored.
‘He’s going through a kung fu phase at the moment,’ Emma added, ‘and he expects poor Jia to know all the moves. Of course every time he comes at her, she just shrieks and runs away.’
Dominique laughed. ‘He’ll get over it.’
‘I wish.’ Emma’s tone was heartfelt. ‘I’m worn out by him, and Greg isn’t much better. And Lily’s a pet, but she’s a bit old to be running after him all the time.’
‘How did you and Greg manage to have such a bloodthirsty child?’ demanded Dominique. ‘You’re both so charming!’
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say he wasn’t ours at all,’ said Emma darkly. ‘Oh, if only I’d had a lovely girl like Kelly.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
Emma groaned. ‘At the moment I do. Lugh was great when he was younger, and hopefully he’ll be great again when he’s a bit older, but right now he’s so difficult.’
‘Kelly went through her obstinate stage too,’ Dominique reminded her. ‘And of course now . . . It’s not all a bed of roses with girls.’
‘What about now?’ asked Emma.
‘Now I look at her living her own life and doing her own thing, and I pray every single day that she gets it right and doesn’t mess up. I’m terrified that she’ll meet the wrong guy and fall for him and waste her life.’
Emma looked at her curiously. ‘Is she seeing someone?’ ‘Oh, she has loads of friends who are boys,’ Dominique replied easily. ‘And she’s not a bit devoted to any of them. But you know what it’s like. One day it hits you, and then ...’ She shrugged.
Emma nodded. ‘And then he’s like a drug and you can’t get enough,’ she finished.
‘Or you marry him.’ Dominique smiled. ‘And then you wonder what on earth it was you saw in him.’
‘Do you think like that?’ asked Emma.
‘No. No.’ Dominique spoke quickly. ‘Not at all. But the mad passion doesn’t last for ever.’
‘If it was ever truly there in the first place.’
There was a sudden silence between the two women. Their friendship had never become close enough for them to share secrets about their marriages, even though both of them sometimes thought about giving advice to the other. But Dominique didn’t want Emma Walsh feeling sorry for her, while Emma had never felt inferior to Dominique Brady and didn’t want to give her any reason to think that she was other than perfectly happy all the time. Despite being related by marriage in the present, they could never entirely forget the pecking order of the past.
‘Mrs Delahaye! Mrs Delahaye!’
Both women turned around. A photographer stood in front of them.
‘Can I get a shot?’ he asked. ‘For the morning paper?’
‘Of course.’ Dominique put her arm around her sister-in-law’s waist and the two of them smiled brightly for the camera. It was a picture that, in the following days, was used over and over again in the newspapers. And everyone who looked at it shook their heads as they gazed at Dazzling Dominique Delahaye looking radiantly confident beside her elegant sister-in-law, utterly unaware of the fact that her gilded life had already come crashing down around her.
Chapter 15
Brendan was in the back garden of their Dublin house. A few years earlier, he’d sold the Bachelors Walk apartment and bought the small but ideally located town house in Mount Merrion. It had been an excellent purchase. The entire family used the house whenever they came to Dublin, and Brendan himself always stayed there when he came to the capital for a business meeting. Today he’d had four of them and they’d been longer, tougher and significantly less successful than he’d either expected or hoped.
He glanced at his watch. He wondered how Domino’s garden party was going. Probably a resounding success, like everything she did these days. She deserved her unofficial title of Ireland’s Most Celebrated Hostess. She’d undoubtedly be pissed at him for not turning up. But she wouldn’t say anything; she never did. Ever since the confrontation after she’d found that text message from Laura, she hadn’t once nagged him or questioned him when he was away. He knew that she had decided to trust him. He admired her for that. And for the way that she’d treated him afterwards - their sex life had improved tremendously. There weren’t many women, Brendan thought, who would have behaved like Domino. She was one in a million. Everybody loved her. He’d made the right choice to stick with her.
His lucky charm.
Until now.
Dominique was disappointed that Brendan hadn’t made it back, though she knew that they’d raised a lot of money even without him there to charm her female guests. Nevertheless, she pushed her irritation with him to one side as she counted up the cash, sealed it in a manila envelope and placed it in the safe in his office. She’d bring it to the bank in the morning and then arrange with the hospital to give them the cheque. They wanted to have a photo shoot of the handover, and Dominique was happy to fall in with whatever suited them.
She closed the safe door and wandered outside again. The garden was back to its pristine state, although a few stray rose petals fluttered lazily across the lawn in the late-evening breeze. She sat down on the huge cushioned chair, which was carefully positioned to catch the dying rays of the sun. There was still quite some time to go before it would finally sink below the horizon. She enjoyed entertaining, but she basked in the quiet time afterwards, when she knew that a good job had been done and she was on her own again, able to lose herself in her thoughts.
Not that they were very exciting thoughts. Actually, sitting in the chair now, she wasn’t thinking of anything at all. She was simply feeling content at being in the place she loved the most in the world, knowing that things had worked out for her and that she was lucky. She probably wouldn’t have planned for her life to have taken the turns it had, but everything happened for a reason. She firmly believed that, just as she firmly believed that she had learned from both the good and the bad.
But hopefully there’s nothing else I need to learn, she told herself. Hopefully I know it all by now.
Brendan hadn’t come home by the time darkness fell and she went inside again. He hadn’t even phoned, which left her feeling annoyed, mostly because his thoughtlessness was wiping out the warm glow of her day. She tried to call him, but his mobile was powered down. Nor was there a reply from the house in Mount Merrion.
Years ago she would have worried about him and wondered why he wasn’t answering his phone, but these days she didn’t. There were a million and one things that could have delayed him, a million and one things that he could be caught up in; and so she put him out of her mind and went to bed early, having told Kelly not to stay out too late. Kelly had laughed and said that she was meeting Alicia and the gang, and that even though Joanna, Alicia’s hell-raising younger sister, was coming along too, they wouldn’t be out late at all and she wasn’t to worry. They were going to spend the night at Alicia’s, she said, because it was nearer town, and so she wasn’t to expect her home.
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