The O’Hara Affair (16 page)

‘Rules are made to be broken.’

‘Not this one. I am sorry.’

Corban shrugged. ‘Hey – no worries. I guess I can take care of some business while you’re tramping the sand dunes.’

‘We’re going up the bog road, actually.’

‘While you’re trotting the bog, then.’

‘Let me just turn off the lights and get rid of the cash, and then I’ll let you in upstairs.’

Fleur took the cash drawer from the till, and carried it into the back room, where the safe was. She didn’t have time to count her takings – she’d be late for Dervla if she did – but she knew they were meagre today. Hallelujah for that last-minute sale!

She wondered what business was taking Corban off to London. It wasn’t entirely unexpected that he’d had to cancel their weekend – Corban was always hopping on and off planes and crisscrossing the world at the drop of a hat. But it had
been sweet of him to drive down from Dublin to tell her in person. Of course, he probably had movie matters to attend to and was killing two birds with one stone, but still. Time was a precious commodity for Corban, and he never wasted it. Nor did Fleur resent the demands on his time. She’d seen too many relationships capsized by the weight of a needy, clinging woman, and she wasn’t about to start dragging Corban under.

How long might he be staying in Lissamore? Just one night? Two? And then Fleur remembered that – yikes – her bedroom was a mess, she hadn’t shaved her underarms, and her toenails needed cutting. Maybe she could have a quick shower when she got back from her walk and take care of her beauty treatments then.

Through the door, she could see Corban sauntering past the rail where the lingerie hung, pausing from time to time to check out textures between finger and thumb. She exchanged her work skirt for jeans, her heels for walking boots, switched off the lights, then went back into the shop.

‘Men seem to gravitate towards that set, for some reason,’ she observed, as she saw Corban unhook the polka-dot number from the rail. ‘That boy who was in here before you was eyeing them, too. He’s an assistant on the film.’

‘An assistant director?’

‘Assistant to the assistant. Do you know him?’

‘No. Is he first or second unit, lighting or casting?’ Corban’s studiedly casual demeanour, was, Fleur suspected, a cover-up for the fact that – now he was a big shot in the world of film-making and had learned to speak the lingo – he actually felt like a dog with two tails. Power and all things hierarchical were important to her lover, and it only added to his charisma.

‘You mean there’s more than one director to be assistant to?’ she asked.

‘There are several. Just as there are several producers.’

‘I don’t know whose assistant he is. He didn’t say.’ Fleur picked up the Dunnes carrier bag and the bunch of tulips. ‘Will you put these in water for me? You’ll find a vase in the utility room upstairs.’

‘Sure,’ said Corban, taking the flowers from her. ‘What time will you be back?’

‘In an hour or so.’

‘Perfect. I’ll make some phone calls, send some mail, and then I’ll be free as a bird.’

He moved across the shop floor to hold the door open for her, and Fleur passed through, loving the feel of his hand on the small of her back. Corban was a quintessential gentleman: standing up when she entered the room; insisting on paying, always; angling the umbrella so that she stayed dry while he took the lion’s share of rain…For Fleur, nothing was sexier than a man with manners. She locked the shop door behind her, then unlocked the adjacent one to her duplex. ‘Do you want to join us for a drink, later?’ she asked him. ‘Dervla and I thought we might pay a visit to O’Toole’s.’

‘Yeah, I’d like that. We might eat there, too, afterwards.’

‘Cool.’ Fleur was glad he’d suggested dinner in O’Toole’s. The last thing she felt like doing was rustling up supper. Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him, then backed away down the street. ‘
A bientôt
, darling. It’s so nice to see you!’

‘Enjoy your walk, Fleur.’

‘I will.’

Fleur turned and moved briskly away. She was running late now, and Dervla would be waiting for her. They regularly walked the bog road as an alternative to walking the beach. The beach walk was glorious, especially on a day like today when it had been raining and the air was rich in ozone.
But the bog road was glorious, too, in its own way, meandering as it did between myriad small lakes, and curling around the low-lying hills. At this time of the year the moorlands looked as if they had a rich Turkish carpet strewn across them, the purple of the heather mingling with the pale gold of honeysuckle in the hedgerows, and the tawny brown of peat.

Dervla was sitting on a low dry-stone wall, looking at something through a pair of binoculars.

‘Who are you spying on?’ Fleur asked as she approached.

‘I think it’s a merlin.’

‘A what?’

‘A type of small falcon. It’s got the sweetest legs, as if it’s wearing little feathered trousers.’

‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a twitcher, Dervla.’

‘I’m hardly a twitcher. But I’ve taken to checking out bird life since Christian gave me these binoculars for my birthday.’ Dervla stood up from the wall, and looped the strap of the binoculars around her neck. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk.’

‘How come Kitty isn’t with you?’ asked Fleur. Christian’s Dalmatian was usually a constant companion on their walks.

‘I had to leave her at home. I went into Ardmore to man the shop for my main man. If you had an air to that…’

‘My main man arrived in town earlier!’ said Fleur, happily. ‘He brought me a really silly gift!’

Dervla raised an eyebrow. ‘Pink
prosecco
, by any chance?’

‘Pink
prosecco
?’ Fleur gave Dervla a curious look. ‘No. What made you think Corban would buy me pink
prosecco
?’

‘I don’t know. Oh, look! Could that be a linnet?’ Dervla raised her binoculars and directed them at a thorn bush.

Fleur didn’t bother to look. She was preoccupied with the bizarre reference to pink
prosecco
. ‘Honestly,
why
would you
think Corban brought me pink
prosecco
, Dervla?’ she persisted.

‘No reason.’ Dervla continued to peer through her binoculars. ‘I’m probably getting dementia, like my mother-in-law. Maybe it’s catching. I found her on the driveway earlier today, trying to take off her vest.’

‘Oh, God. How are things with her, generally?’

‘I don’t see too much of her. Well, I do actually: if I look out of the turret room window, I can see directly into her sitting room. She seems to spend the entire day watching TV.’

‘I thought she was half blind?’

‘She is, but she loves to listen to David Attenborough programmes. And old musicals.’

‘Does she ever get out?’

‘Yes. We took her out to lunch not long ago. And we’re toying with the idea of having dinner in Coolnamara Castle this weekend.’

‘Coolnamara Castle? Corban and I were meant to be spending the weekend there.’

‘Meant to be?’

‘We had to postpone. Business has claimed him elsewhere. He’s flying off to London.’

‘Business has claimed Christian, too. It looks as though he’s going to have to head off to France for a couple of weeks.’

‘Nice break for him.’

‘Yes. But not so great for me. The really bad news is that those are the two weeks when Nemia is due to take her holidays.’

‘Oo-er. What are you going to do about Mrs Vaughan?’

‘We may have to get her into residential care if we can’t find a replacement. It’s unbelievably expensive, Fleur. I rang a friend in Dublin who had to spend time in a care home
when she broke her leg. She says that if she hadn’t had private insurance it would have cost her two and a half grand a
week
.’

Fleur shuddered. ‘What will become of us, I wonder, when we’re old and decrepit?’

‘I’d really rather not think about it.’

‘At least you have Christian,’ observed Fleur.

‘And you have Corban.’

‘Ah, but Corban has no duty of care to me, since we are not married.’

‘Have you ever thought about it?’

‘Marrying Corban?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ replied Fleur, with a laugh that she contrived to make careless. ‘Corban’s not the kind of man to marry a second time. He is – how does that phrase go? Once bitten…something.’

‘Once bitten, twice shy.’ There was a pause. ‘When will I get to meet him?’

‘This evening. He’s joining us for a drink in O’Toole’s.’

There was another pause, then: ‘What exactly does he do, your boyfriend?’ asked Dervla. ‘I mean, aside from being a hotshot film producer?’

‘I’ve never really asked him. I just know he’s loaded enough to sink megabucks into a movie.’

‘I’d love to pay a visit to the location. Río tells me that they’ve reconstructed an entire famine village beyond Ardmore.’

‘A visit could be arranged. Maybe we should have a girlie lunch afterwards – you, me and Río. I hear there’s a new restaurant just opened in Ardmore.’

‘Chez Jules. It’s very good. That’s where we took Daphne for lunch. Shane was eating there, too, with – with a friend.’

‘That must have been Corban!’

‘Really?’

‘Tall, dark and handsome?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s my man!’ fluted Fleur. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’

‘Yes.’ Dervla drew her sunglasses from a pocket and slid them on.

‘How is Shane? Did you speak to him?’

‘I did. He’s still in love with Río you know, Fleur.’

‘I’ve suspected that for a long time. Poor Río.’

‘I dunno. It must feel pretty damned fine to have a film star mad about you.’

‘Not when there’s nothing you can do about it. You know as well as I do that Río would never leave Lissamore – especi ally when there’s every chance that her son’s on his way back to her.’

‘Finn’s coming back to Lissamore? How do you know?’

‘Oh – I overheard some kid talking about it in the shop.’

Fleur didn’t want to tell Dervla that she’d actually read about Finn’s homecoming on a Facebook page. She was becoming a tad worried about her Facebook habits: the social networking site was proving more than a little addictive.

Bethany had accepted her as a friend without a quibble, and since then, Fleur had been keeping a regular eye on the girl’s profile. She didn’t know what it was about Bethany O’Brien that she found so fascinating. She guessed that there was something about her that reminded her of the teenage Fleur: imaginative, vulnerable, romantic – in love with the idea of being in love. And now that Fleur had no Daisy to be a surrogate mother to, she found offering Bethany vicarious advice over the internet enormously satisfying.

The girl was still in town, she knew, working every day on
The O’Hara Affair
. She claimed to find extra work so dull that she’d taken to visiting an online community called
Second Life, and had invited Flirty O’Farrell to meet up with her there. Fleur was tempted, but the first time she’d visited Second Life she’d found it to be full of people whom she perceived to be very young, very bored and rather silly. Bethany had also mentioned that she was living on her own in the family cottage in nearby Díseart, enjoying the freedom it afforded her, and Fleur had IM’d her back immediately, warning her not to broadcast the fact.

It hadn’t been on Bethany’s profile that Fleur had found out about Finn coming home – it had been on the profile of a girl called Izzy Bolger, his one-time girlfriend, and a Facebook friend of Daisy’s. Fleur remembered what a stunning young couple Finn and Izzy had been, and wondered if they were still an item. Izzy’s status told her she was in a relationship, but maybe she had moved on from Finn? It felt strange to be able to follow the trail of these young people as they journeyed around the world: Izzy was off to Dubai, next, where her father had won the tender on some new construction project.

‘Remember Adair Bolger?’ she asked Dervla. ‘Río nearly had a thing going with him didn’t she?’

‘She could have been a contender, all right. But I think she baulked a bit at the idea of becoming her son’s girlfriend’s father’s girlfriend – found the whole thing a bit incestuous. Where is he now, I wonder?’

‘He went to Dubai after his business here went bust.’

‘And that big house of his never sold,’ mused Dervla. ‘It was on my books when I was a working girl. I guess it never will sell, now. Finn had some mad dream of converting it into a scuba-diving centre. Thanks be to Christ he didn’t. Could you imagine trying to run a destination dive centre in this economic climate?’

‘“All’s changed, changed utterly,”’ said Fleur.

‘That’s Yeats, isn’t it? My dad used to quote from that poem when he was in his cups. And wasn’t he right, auld W B? It’s incredible to think how this country’s changed in the course of a year. Millionaire property dealers forced to go and live in Dubai, house prices plummeting, wine merchants stocking cheap bubbly instead of Cristal…’

‘But at least we don’t live in the city! Look, look around you! It’s heaven!’

‘It is,’ agreed Dervla.

‘Give me a go with your binoculars,’ said Fleur, reaching for them.

Through the binoculars she saw to the west the navy stripe of the horizon where sea met sky; a shoreline flecked with aquamarine and turquoise; a beach of golden sand fringed with emerald dunes; flanks of hills stippled with blue cloud shadow; a countryside ashimmer with sun and rinsed squeaky clean by rain, and, as her gaze took in the windrippled watered silk of the lakes, Fleur decided that if Coolnamara was couture, the only designer responsible for its creation could be Lainey Keogh.

Dervla strode along the bog road, wanting to kick herself.
Why
had she mentioned the
prosecco
? Fleur’s mention of a silly gift had led her to assume that Corban must have presented her with the pink fizz, but that was quite clearly not the case. So who
was
to be the recipient? A girlfriend? The waitress she’d seen him handing his card to in Chez Jules? Or the girl he’d been ogling through the window of the restaurant?