What She Wants (47 page)

impress upon new staff that this was a special place. As if someone as suave and sophisticated as Christy De Lacy would seriously be interested in her. They went down the back stairs, Hope burning with embarrassment at how silly she must have looked as she simpered up at him like a schoolgirl. Obviously, a man so handsome must be used to women throwing themselves at him but she hadn’t so much thrown herself as launched herself from a great height. How humiliating. She could barely speak for embarrassment. He delivered her at a plain door. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Hutchinson you’re here,’ he said, opening the door. After a moment, he came out and told her that Mrs Hutchinson, head of the accounts office, was waiting for her. ‘We shall meet again soon, I hope,’ he said, giving her a formal handshake. ‘Thank you, Mr De Lacy,’ Hope said, trying to pull off the double whammy of being polite and apologetic all in one. ‘It’s Christy, not Mr De Lacy,’ he smiled. Hope watched him as he strode off down the corridor. Had she imagined it or had that last searching look as they said goodbye been a look that couldn’t possibly be construed as platonic? No. She must have imagined it. Mrs Hutchinson turned out to be a jolly local woman of fifty who was just as friendly as she’d been during Hope’s phone interview and immediately insisted that Hope call her Una. ‘This office isn’t the place for formality, as I’ve always said,’ she smiled, introducing Hope to the other accounts person, an impish young woman called Janet. ‘The way Mr De Lacy called you Mrs Hutchinson, I thought it was,’ Hope said. ‘What did you think of him?’ inquired Una with great innocence. ‘He’s very nice, I found,’ Hope said lightly. She missed the glance between the two others. ‘Such a pity he’ll never have a girlfriend,’ said Janet mournfully. ‘Such a tragedy…’

‘What tragedy?’ asked Hope, jumping straight into the trap. ‘Gotcha!’ giggled Una. ‘He’s irresistible, Mr De Lacy, isn’t he? Everyone falls for him.’ ‘I haven’t fallen for him,’ protested Hope hotly. ‘I’m a married woman with children, I’ll have you know …’ Una patted her on the arm. ‘You’re going to fit right in,’ she said. ‘Until they let us have a television in the staff room, lusting after Christy De Lacy is the only entertainment we get around here! And no, he’s not married, before you ask.’ They giggled again. ‘Bet you were putty in his hands,’ sighed Janet. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Hope said firmly in her best Mummy tone. ‘Now, I expect you’ve work you want me to do,’ she added, trying to banish the image of herself puttylike in Christy De Lacy’s firm hands; kneading her flesh, getting the knots out of her tense shoulders and then splaying further down …

Mary-Kate and Delphine turned up at Curlew Cottage that night with several bottles of wine and a pot of Mary-Kate’s legendary mushroom soup, ‘so you don’t have to worry about cooking,’ she told Hope. In the three weeks since Matt had gone, the three women often had dinner together and Hope had learned that Mary-Kate was the most incredible cook. Delphine was greeted with delight by Toby and Millie, who considered her to be a bigger version of themselves with the added bonus that she was allowed to work the video recorder. For a few moments, nobody could hear themselves think with the children trying to drown each other out in asking Delphine to play their game. ‘Mine, mine!’ yelled Millie, who could roar for Ireland. ‘We’ll play your game and Toby’s,’ Delphine announced diplomatically. ‘But I have to talk to your mummy first. How did you get on?’ she asked.

‘Wonderful. Una’s lovely.’ ‘Oh, she’s an utter pet,’ Delphine cried. ‘She practically runs that place and she doesn’t have a bossy bone in her body. It’s only since her husband’s been sick that she’s had to take all those days off and there are so many bits of paper flying in and out of that office, that the place can’t cope. And isn’t Janet gas?’ ‘Great. Oh, and I met the manager,’ Hope said idly. ‘Christy De Lacy.’ She couldn’t help it: she liked saying his name, liked the way it rolled off her tongue. From her position on the couch between Millie and Toby, Delphine shot a look at Hope. ‘And you liked him?’ she inquired. Hope glowed. ‘He was an angel, he gave me a tour of the hotel. Sorry, Manoir.’ ‘How come I’ve never set eyes on this man?’ Mary-Kate demanded. ‘I must be the only woman in a ten-mile radius who doesn’t swoon at the mention of his name. Why does he never come into the chemist looking for spot cream or anything? I think I should write a letter of complaint to someone. What does the Minister for Justice do again? Would he be able to handle it?’ Hope laughed. ‘You should book yourself in for a tour of the Manoir,’ she said. ‘Then you’d get to meet him.’ ‘Ah,’ Mary-Kate said wisely, ‘maybe he only gives those tours to gorgeous thirty-something women wearing fitted little suits.’ ‘There’ll be no wine for you, madam,’ Hope joked, ‘if you keep up that line of thought. He’s just a nice man, that’s all. Nobody’s swooning.’ Just talking about the hotel with him was hardly the first sign of a grande affaire, now was it, she thought to herself. Delphine picked up Millie’s story book with a sense of unease in her heart. She didn’t like to tell Hope that she’d seen Mr De Lacy being very not nice, being downright nasty in fact, when the Latin curl of his lip had turned into a sneer and his much

admired eyes were as hard as nails. Most women seemed to love him; they fell hook, line and sinker for that suave business even though Delphine felt it was all an act. Even poor Una Hutchinson, God love her, who was besotted with her big lummox of a husband, had a soft spot for Christy. A soft spot that wasn’t the Bog of Allen, as Delphine’s father might have said wryly. Still, it wasn’t up to her to warn Hope off him. Hope was married to the utterly gorgeous Matt, a man who’d knock spots off the smarmy Christy any day of the week. Why would Hope even look twice at Christy when she was married to Matt? It’d be like living in a cream bun factory and sneaking out to buy diet biscuits from the corner shop. No, there was no need to worry. The children went to bed reluctantly although the fact that Delphine was going to tell them a bedtime story cheered them up. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ Hope asked her, not wanting to take advantage. ‘I love doing it,’ Delphine said. ‘I love kids and this pair are little dotes.’ Hope went downstairs to Mary-Kate. ‘She’s so good with children, she’ll be a wonderful mother,’ she said. ‘Do you think she and Eugene will have kids?’ ‘I’m sure they’d love to but I think she’s waiting for her mother to welcome Eugene into the bosom of the family first. Poor Delphine,’ Mary-Kate sighed. ‘I’m afraid she’ll be waiting a long time. I don’t know why she just doesn’t get married and let my idiot of a sister like it or lump it.’ ‘People can be very cruel without knowing it, can’t they?’ Hope said. ‘What right has anyone to tell Delphine how to live her life?’ Mary-Kate said nothing but just stared into the middle distance. She looked sad and fragile, Hope thought suddenly. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked. Her friend seemed to visibly shake herself back to reality. ‘Old memories,’ she said finally.

Hope felt as if she’d stumbled clumsily across someone else’s pain and did her best to backtrack. ‘Shall we have some of your wonderful soup?’ she said brightly. The older woman didn’t appear to have heard her. Hope had never seen Mary-Kate look maudlin or sad. It was scary. Mary-Kate was the one who buoyed them all up and made them laugh. She was the one who helped the Macrame Club women laugh at life and see the funny side. To witness her looking so forlorn was a shock. ‘I think they’re asleep,’ whispered Delphine, tiptoeing downstairs. ‘They were tired. I only managed one story.’ ‘They’re always tired on the days when they’re at the creche,’ Hope replied. ‘I don’t know what Giselle does with them there but it’s fantastic’ ‘She probably has a special baby gym and she ties them to the walker for an hour every day and leaves them at it,’ suggested Delphine mischievously. ‘Now there’s a thought,’ Hope said. ‘I’ll have to invest in one of those myself.’ Even Mary-Kate laughed at that notion. They were soon feasting on the delicious soup mopped up with chunks of soda bread, all washed down with wine. The talk turned to the sort of week they’d all had and Hope managed to talk about her morning in the accounts office without mentioning Christy again. Delphine made them scream with laughter with her story of an elderly film star who was staying in the hotel with his wife and who’d wanted his chest hair waxed that afternoon. ‘Stronger sex indeed,’ she laughed. ‘I’ve given women Brazilian waxes that would bring tears to your eyes and they clench their teeth with pain and say nothing. But your man … he roared so much that I couldn’t bear it from wanting to laugh and I had to get Antoinette to take over. And you wouldn’t mind but when it was over, he came out all macho and asked me if I wanted to have a drink with him later! The nerve of him. His wife is a sweetheart, I did her nails earlier, and there he was asking me out!’

‘Such excitement,’ teased Mary-Kate. ‘I hope you said yes.’ ‘I told him it was unethical to go out with clients,’ Delphine grinned. ‘I managed not to mention that I’d rather pull my own teeth out with a pliers first. Yeuch. He was creepy. Let’s talk about something else.’ ‘I’m afraid I’ve had a very dull day compared to the pair of you,’ Mary-Kate said. ‘But I did meet the Merry Widow Maguire and I got to hear all about her new venture.’ ‘I didn’t know there actually was a widow,’ said Hope in surprise. ‘I thought the pub was just called that because it sounded good. I’ve never seen her.’ ‘That’s because she spends most of the winter in her villa in Portugal,’ Mary-Kate explained. ‘She’s the quintessential merry widow, Belle Maguire is. And why not. It’s a mystery to me why she didn’t die of sheer suffering before her husband popped his clogs because he was the most miserable man ever walked on the earth. But he was rich.’ She grinned. ‘Virtue does have its rewards. When he died, Belle renamed the pub - it was plain old Maguire’s until then - got herself a villa and doesn’t come back to Ireland until March. Rumour has it that she’s got a boyfriend half her age out there but she never brings him back here, more’s the pity. I’d love to clap eyes on a toyboy.’ ‘She sounds fascinating and dead glamorous,’ Hope said. ‘She’s glamorous in a perma-tan-and-gold-handbag sort of way,’ Mary-Kate explained, ‘but the only people she bothers to fascinate are men. She’s not a woman’s woman. I’d keep Matt clamped to your side when she sees him because he’ll be just her type.’ ‘She’ll have to fight off Finula then,’ Hope said with a hint of bitterness. ‘She’s round here every second day asking how he is and what he’s been up to. As if I’d know. I’m only his wife.’ ‘Ah now,’ Delphine said comfortingly, ‘you know he’ll be missing you like mad. Men are hopeless at phoning.’

‘He’s probably guilty at having left you here on your own with the children,’ added Mary-Kate. He has a funny way of showing it, then, Hope thought to herself. He hadn’t phoned since Tuesday evening. Two whole days ago. Hope wouldn’t have lasted eight hours away from her family without phoning anxiously but it seemed that Matt didn’t feel the same way. He’d walked out that door nearly three weeks ago and had forgotten about them. She’d been feeling lonely since he’d gone but it was apparent that he wasn’t suffering at all. No doubt Betsey was squiring him all over town, triumphantly dragging him to parties and launches as a sought-after man on his own. The fact that he had a wife at home in her rural paradise wouldn’t matter to the man-hungry predators who prowled the party scene. Without her and the kids to cramp his style, Matt would have a whale of a time, she thought glumly. Both Delphine and Mary-Kate gave her an extra-tender hug when they went, as if they were physically telling her what they didn’t want to say with words: that they knew she was lonely and that they were there for her. Hope remembered her friends in Bath and wondered frankly if any of them would have been as good to her as her new friends here in Redlion. She tidied up, locked the doors, checked the windows and then went up to her lonely bed. But strangely, she didn’t mind being on her own tonight. She curled the duvet snugly around herself. She could lie there and indulge in a fantasy where Christy De Lacy’s shining black eyes loomed large. Matt had gone off to Bath, so she was entitled to have a little dream about Christy, wasn’t she? It was harmless after all. Like Baileys and ice as a comforting night cap when you were on a diet. Slightly naughty but so, so nice. On Sunday night, Hope found herself rifling through her wardrobe trying to work out what to wear. It had been years since she’d done that. She’d worn a uniform at Witherspoon’s and since she’d been living in Redlion, her daily outfit was almost as predictable as the office skirt and blouse:

jeans or one of her pairs of navy chinos and either a sweatshirt or fleecy top. For a total high fashion look, she sometimes added eyeliner and lipstick, but not all the time. She didn’t want to frighten the hens with full makeup. None of the above were suitable for a morning in the Manoir, of course and the bed was soon piled high with blouses, skirts and trousers she hadn’t been able to get into for years. The pile reminded her of being a teenager riddled with anxiety about what to wear. Sam, two and a half years older, had never seemed to be bothered about clothes. With her, it had been a simple matter of opening the colour coordinated wardrobe and instantly pulling out something suitable. Sam hadn’t worried about what boys would think of her bum in those trousers or whether she had fat arms or not. Sam’s attitude had been: ‘Let the boys worry - why should I?’ At the time, Hope had longed for the effortless chic of her older sister. What was she thinking about - she still longed for Sam’s effortless, uncaring chic. Matt, who’d made up for his lack of phone calls with a long one on Friday, rang at ten past eight. ‘Hello,’ whispered Hope, half in and half out of a clingy polo neck and praying the children wouldn’t wake up because of the phone ringing. ‘Why are you talking like that?’ asked Matt. ‘So I won’t wake Toby and Millie,’ she said, pulling off the polo neck. Matt groaned. ‘I wanted to talk to them,’ he said miserably. His wife shook her head in disbelief at the male sense of timing. ‘What time is it, Matt?’ she inquired sarcastically. ‘Do you not realize they’re always in bed by now.’ ‘No they’re not,’ he replied. ‘They stay up later sometimes.’ ‘Sometimes,’ she agreed, ‘but not often. You should have rung earlier. We were here.’ While you were having fun in Bath and forgetting all about us, was the subtext.