Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (48 page)
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Authors: Cathy Kelly
Over the years, so much of Ardagh had changed: entire streets had been transformed as old family businesses made way for high street chains and big conglomerates. The Classic Cinema, where Star and her friends had eaten popcorn and screamed their way through
Jaws,
was now a car park, and the Soda Pop where they’d drunk cheap coffee and occasionally had enough money to indulge in the house speciality–a banana split–had been demolished and a supermarket built in its place.
But Kenny’s never changed. It had been updated, with plenty
of money spent, but the place looked and felt essentially the same: a graceful old-style Edwardian shop front that took up an entire block, with glossy small-paned windows and swing doors ornamented with shining brass fittings. A curlicued sign hung over every door:
Kenny’s–Established 1924.
Star left her car in the car park behind Kenny’s, walked around to the delivery door at the back and pressed the bell. It was over an hour to opening, and most of the staff wouldn’t have arrived yet, but Lena had promised to be at the delivery door at eight. The door buzzed and Star pushed it open, pulling the small wheelie trolley, with its precious cargo of tapestries, behind her. The place was dark and there was nobody visible, so Star wasn’t sure who’d buzzed her in, but she began to walk in the direction of the back stairs to the offices, looking around for signs of life. The doors to the stairs were locked when she tried them. The only bit of light was coming from the double doors that led on to the shop floor. Perhaps that’s where Lena was.
Star pushed open the doors and breathed in the magical scent of Kenny’s.
After the gloom of the delivery area, it was like entering a beautifully lit jewel box. In the distance, she could hear the faint drone of a vacuum cleaner. The lights were on in the shop and the scents of perfume mingled with the smell of furniture polish and a faint hint of warm pastries wafting down from the café upstairs. She left her trolley against a wall and began to walk through this paradise, enjoying the sensation of being there all on her own.
Lena often chatted about the various departments. How David Kenny, the current owner, had said he wanted a very distinctive jewellery area, with unusual pieces from local craftsmen and women as well as the big brands. It was the same in the fashion department: there was a small section where young, just-out-of-college designers could display their clothes. The perfume and cosmetics halls, the most valuable
space per square metre in any department store, were filled with all the usual brands, but pride of place went to Organic Belle, a range of skin products made entirely in a small village in West Cork.
‘David has a great eye for the next big thing,’ Lena confided. ‘Nobody had heard of Organic Belle when he brought them in two years ago; now they’re big in Los Angeles and some famous hotel chain wants the range in all their spas. They’re going to be huge. You should try the products. We’ve a lovely woman who works there, Charlie Fallon. She could help you.’
Star sensed that Lena thought she was the epitome of an eccentric artist, partly because she lived in such a remote spot, and partly because Star had said she rarely visited Kenny’s. Lena, who lived and breathed the store, and didn’t see how anyone else could fail to adore the place, was shocked.
‘You mean, you don’t shop there?’
‘I was there twice last year,’ Star pointed out.
‘But that was to see me,’ Lena said.
Consequently, she did her best to sell the notion of Kenny’s to Star, highlighting bits she thought Star might like, which included anything vaguely natural.
Passing the Organic Belle counters, Star inhaled the subtle scent of the brand’s best-selling balm: an instantly relaxing combination of lemongrass and lavender.
Star had seen Charlie, the woman Lena had spoken of, on one of her earlier visits. Although she didn’t exactly resemble her mother, Star was pretty sure that Charlie was the younger daughter of Kitty Nelson, a stalwart of the women’s feminist movement in the seventies and someone Star had known many years ago. It was the eyes: ever so slightly cat-shaped. But while Kitty’s eyes had been feline in every respect, particularly when it came to men, Charlie’s were soft and gentle. She would be a very different sort of woman to her feisty, femme fatale mother, Star instinctively felt.
Beyond the Organic Belle counters, lay the entrance to the
food hall, and even though all the boxes of sweets and cookies were packed away, the lingering aroma of caramel and butter filled the air.
‘I love the food hall,’ Lena had explained, determined to make Star into a Kenny’s fan. ‘We sell proper food there. David realised there was a vast market for ready-to-eat gourmet food and since we’ve started selling the locally produced “I Made It Myself, Honest” range, sales have been enormous.’ People loved the food, Lena went on: simple produce expertly cooked with zero additives.
On her previous visits, Star had been into the homes department, which sold Irish pottery and glass. Star could never resist pottery, but she hadn’t been into the lingerie department, despite Lena explaining about their biggest seller: a range made by a former home economics teacher from Dublin who was fed up with trying to get comfortable suck-it-all-in underwear for women over size 18, and had designed her own range.
‘Fabulous idea,’ said Lena. ‘She made it all on her sewing machine, but when she went round the shops trying to get business, David was the only one to bite. And now look at it. We can’t keep it on the shelves and all the big stores in London want it too. What other man would see that there was a need for that?’ Lena asked.
Star smiled. Lena would have died with embarrassment if she’d thought she was implying that slender Star needed control pants.
‘And it’s not as if he has any experience with a wife at home looking for control pants every time she needs to dress up,’ Lena went on. ‘He’s married to Ingrid Fitzgerald, for heaven’s sake–she’s only a size 12. Has an incredible figure. So it’s pure business sense on his part. You have to admire that, don’t you?’
Star rarely watched television. She
had
one, but it was ancient and she really only turned on for the news. Even so, she knew who Ingrid Fitzgerald was. In a world where many
political television interviewers were male, Ingrid stood out as the best of them all: highly intelligent, poised and adept at getting answers to the hard questions. And beautiful, too. Not the fleeting type of beauty that came from fluffed-up hair and a carapace of make-up, but a real, deep-down kind–lovely bone structure, intelligent eyes and an expressive, warm face.
And the thing was, Ingrid looked as if she was as lovely inside as she was out. Star had always been a very good judge of that. They were similar in age too, although Ingrid might be younger, Star thought. In another world, they might have been friends. Ingrid had two children, grown-up now, and her daughter, Molly, shared a flat with a girl Star had known when she was just a baby. Natalie was twenty-three now: Star kept count.
Natalie had nearly been born in Star’s house, and Star would never forget the frantic dash to hospital with Des, while Dara lay on the backseat howling in pain. Star had been one of the first people to hold the tiny baby with the head of curly dark hair and she’d felt what she always felt when she held a newborn–that they knew all the wisdom of the world.
Star had been part of Natalie’s world for little more than three years before Dara had died. Star, like everyone else in Dara’s circle of friends, had sworn to abide by Dara’s rules about her little daughter.
‘Let me go, don’t try to hold on to the past,’ Dara had insisted, fearing that the memory of her dead mother would darken Natalie’s future.
‘She deserves to know who you are,’ Star had pleaded. ‘
Were,
’ she amended sadly.
Dara had shaken her head fiercely. ‘It’s better this way,’ she said. The past could destroy people, and she didn’t want that for Natalie. What she wanted for her daughter was a new life with her father. ‘Des is wonderful, he’ll bring her up so well. Perhaps he’ll marry again, and they’ll be much happier without me like a spectre in the background.’
And so everyone who loved Dara had promised her that they wouldn’t be a part of little Natalie’s world, telling her how like her mother she was or recounting tales of the days before she was born. Though Star had only known Dara a few years–since that rainy day she’d found her lying in utter despair on the coast road–she was one of the few people who’d heard the heartbreaking story of Dara’s earlier life.
‘The past hurts,’ said Dara, determined to spare her beloved daughter the pain.
‘But knowing can bring about healing,’ Star replied. ‘You can transcend the misery: you have.’
But Dara was firm. For Star, who lived on instinct, staying out of Natalie’s life as she grew up had been one of the hardest vows she’d ever kept.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the double doors on to the street swinging shut. A blast of icy February air whirled in, along with a man in a long grey overcoat, the collar turned up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he walked at speed, as if there wasn’t enough time to do all he wanted in life.
From her position beside a display of jewelled clips and silk-flower hairclips, Star watched David Kenny pass though his department store. He didn’t survey his surroundings the way she imagined he normally did, those clever eyes noting every detail and marking it down in his memory if something needed to be changed. His eyes were focused on something else entirely, something inward. The closer he got, the more she could see the tension in his face. His hair was greying, salt and pepper around the temples. Distinguished, Star thought; that was the word for it. He reached the stationary escalator in the centre of the store and instead of climbing up, showing how fit he undoubtedly was, he jabbed a red button. The escalator hummed to life and he stood in perfect stillness as it bore him up to the next floor.
Star had heard that David Kenny, like his father before
him, made a practice of walking through his beloved store every day, making sure all was well. All might have been well in the store this morning, but watching him now, Star was certain that all was not well with David Kenny.
Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Only someone who knew him well could detect the strain on his carefully composed face. Once, she’d known David Kenny better than she’d known any other human being. Now, the closest she got to him was when she reached a hand out in her garden and touched his tree, a rowan that had grown tall and strong in the thirty-five years since she’d planted it. She hadn’t talked to him since then, though she was sure he was well aware that she was Bluestone Tapestries. Lena’s initial attempt to arrange an introduction had been gently brushed away, with Star explaining that she ‘didn’t do corporate stuff’.
‘Oh, but David meets
everyone,
’ Lena said.
‘Not me,’ Star replied, smiling to show that she was happier that way. And she was grateful that David appeared to accept this, for he had made no attempt to meet her.
It wasn’t that she was angry with David. No. It hadn’t ended that way at all. It just wasn’t meant to be for her and the passionate young poet who’d written verses to her beauty, and made love to her as if he’d found his life’s meaning when their bodies were together. No, she wasn’t angry with him. Her life had worked out in its own way. Until now, she’d imagined David’s had too.
But seeing how tense he looked, she wasn’t so sure.
An old saying of her mother’s came to mind: ‘What’s meant for you will find you.’ Many people took that to mean good things, but Star was enough of a student of the universe to know that it could mean bad things too.
Whatever terrible sadness was touching David, Star hoped he was able to deal with it.
Be kind to other women. It really works–most of the time. And even on those days when it doesn’t, it’ll make you feel better inside.
That night, Ingrid sat at the beautifully laid dinner table in a grand old house, with her husband David and eleven other elegantly dressed couples, and wished with all her heart that she wasn’t there. The scent of the freesias in the crystal bowl in the centre of the table fought valiantly with the women’s perfumes, which were predominantly musky with the odd note of sharp florals. Ingrid loved scent, but she hated the heavy, cloying perfumes so many women wore at night, as if they were using pheromones to attract a caveman rather than attending a civilised dinner party with their husbands.
She reached across the snowy white tablecloth and pulled the bowl closer to her, leaning forward to smell the pure, clean flowers. Instantly, she was transported to her terrace on a late spring day, where she would sit revelling in the seclusion as she read the morning papers. Pity she wasn’t there now.
Stop,
she told herself. The evening wasn’t going to grow magically shorter by wishing it was over.
The problem was that these people were David’s friends.
Odd how a couple could be married for thirty years and still have such disparate friends. They shared some, people they’d known all their married life, but their careers had brought them a collection of acquaintances from two completely different worlds.
Tonight was a night for David’s people, in particular their host, the owner of a large transport company, useful to Kenny’s. Three other businessmen whom David knew were also present: wealthy men with glamorous wives; women with beautiful hair and nails and wearing diamonds of every possible cut.
Looking around the table, Ingrid decided that the dinner party was entirely made up of successful men and their wives. There were no business women; Ingrid could spot them from fifty paces, for no matter how successful they were, they were never quite as polished as the wives of alpha men. Years interviewing the great and the good on
Politics Tonight
had taught her that it was rare for an alpha man to form a lasting relationship with a woman who had as much power as he did. People were probably amazed that she and David had stuck together; most men would have been uncomfortable sharing the limelight with a woman who made her living grilling politicians on live TV. But then, David wasn’t most men. He was, Ingrid thought, smiling across the table at him, special.
He caught her eye and smiled back, and she thought how well he looked in his grey suit and pale pink shirt. She knew he was tired because of the lines around his eyes, but nobody else would pick up on that. They’d see the usual handsome, charming David Kenny, the man who’d inherited the family firm and taken it on to a whole new level. In the same way, nobody looking at Ingrid would see a woman with a mild headache who didn’t want to be here. They’d see what she wanted them to see: a woman who’d pulled out all the stops with hair and make-up, yet remained modest in the diamond department. Ingrid felt that knuckle-duster rings were like push-up bras: you either liked them or you didn’t.
The only interesting thing about nights out schmoozing David’s business acquaintances was that Ingrid ceased to be Ingrid Fitzgerald, the television personality who’d kept her maiden name from her days as a radio producer; she was Ingrid Kenny, David’s wife. And sometimes, just sometimes, that made her deliciously invisible. Like now.
The man seated on her left turned to talk to her.
‘You’re Mrs Kenny, aren’t you?’ he said. He was sixty something, balding, with a weathered complexion that spoke of many hours spent outdoors, probably on the sea, Ingrid decided. His outfit, a blue blazer with gold buttons, had a hint of ‘Commodore of the Yacht Club’ about it.
‘Yes,’ said Ingrid gently, sensing that he had no idea who she was professionally. ‘I’m Ingrid, David’s wife.’
‘Marvellous business,’ the Commodore said, grabbing his glass of red wine. ‘Kenny’s–what a store. I don’t suppose you have time to be involved yourself, do you? I know what you ladies are like; so many other things to do, charities, committees…’ He smiled at her benignly. ‘My wife, Elizabeth–that’s her over there in the red–she’s on four committees. I don’t know where she finds the time.’
Elizabeth was a steely-eyed brunette, who was expertly made-up and wore an exotic beaded creation. She was watching Ingrid and her husband with interest. Ingrid reckoned that Elizabeth recognised her from the television and was just as sure that Elizabeth knew the poor old Commodore wouldn’t.
‘Well, I am involved in some charities,’ Ingrid said to her neighbour. She was a patron of an AIDS charity, on the board of a domestic abuse, and regularly hosted charity balls. ‘But I don’t have that much time, because I work too.’
‘Oh, really,’ said her neighbour airily, as if the notion of a woman working was highly eccentric and would never catch on. ‘And what is it you do?’
It was moments like these that Ingrid stored up to tell her
friend, Marcella, whenever Marcella claimed that everyone and their lawyer knew who Ingrid was.
‘You’ve such a recognisable face,’ Marcella insisted.
‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Ingrid replied. ‘Famous is for film stars and singers, not people like me. People recognise me, they just don’t know where from. They think they must have seen me in the supermarket or something.’
The downside of her being on television a lot was going into Marks & Spencer’s and nipping up to the underwear department to find several people watching her with fascination as she searched among the briefs, trying to find a five-pack of knickers that suited her.
Anyway, here was this sweet man who clearly had no idea who she was and it was quite nice, although difficult to explain what she did without making it sound as if she was big-headed about it. She knew that some people in her position might have fixed him with a grim glare and told him she was one of the highest paid broadcasters in the State and could make politicians whimper for their mummies. But Ingrid preferred a low-key approach.
‘I work in television,’ she said simply.
‘Oh really! Interesting. My daughter worked in television for a while, researching stuff. It was a terrible job, awful pay and, goodness, there was no hope of really climbing the ladder. Only a few seem to make it,’ he went on.
‘Yes,’ echoed Ingrid, ‘only a few do seem to make it.’
Ingrid thought of her years climbing the television ladder. It had been challenging at times, but she hadn’t had to stiletto anyone in the groin to make it to the top–a fact that many people, interviewing her these days for newspaper profiles, found incredible.
‘It must be so much tougher for a woman,’ they said, eager to hear about glass ceilings, male-dominated power structures and male broadcasters bitching about her as they got subtly patted with Mac Face & Body in make-up.
‘The media–this part of it, anyway–is one of the few areas where women can do well easily,’ Ingrid would explain. But nobody appeared to believe that her own calm self-confidence and native intelligence had made it work.
‘What about you,’ she said politely to the Commodore, ‘what do you do?’
It was all the encouragement the Commodore needed. He was soon explaining the difference between a yacht and a boat, and Ingrid let her attention wander. Across the table, her husband seemed to be enjoying himself talking to a lovely woman who’d been introduced to her earlier as Laura.
She liked watching David. He was charming to everyone, not in a false way but in a way that said he was interested in other people. His father had been the same: always ready to talk to everyone in the store, from the cleaners to the general manager.
OK?
David mouthed at her across the table.
Ingrid nodded imperceptibly. She was fine.
‘Sorry, you got stuck with Erskine,’ he said three hours later in the back of the taxi on their way home. He put his hand in hers and held it tightly, as they both sat back after what had turned out to be an incredibly heavy meal. Double cream with everything. Ingrid’s insides yearned for Pepto-Bismol.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was quite nice really, but I’m now an expert on boats and if I ever need to interview anyone on the subject, Erskine is the man I will ask.’
David laughed. He had a great laugh, rich and deep, the sort that made everyone else want to join in. Out of the corner of her eye, Ingrid could see the taxi driver grin as well. They were undoubtedly the sort of customers the driver liked: polite, sedate, middle-aged people being picked up from one beautiful suburban house and whisked off to another, with no chance of anyone throwing up in the back of the cab or not having the money to pay him.
‘Erskine probably didn’t have a clue who you were, did he?’ David asked perceptively.
‘Not the foggiest,’ Ingrid said. ‘I may have left him with the impression that I made the tea in the television studios.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that!’ David laughed. ‘That’s cruel. I bet his wife knew, all right. She’s probably telling him the truth right now.’
‘No, it’s not cruel,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was terribly sweet and everything, but you know, he does live on this planet, he should be interested in politics.’
‘I’m quite sure he is interested in politics, darling,’ David replied mildly, ‘but not everyone watches television.’
It was an idea that Ingrid had heard many times before, but one that she could never quite grasp. She was of the opinion that people should know what was going on in the world, and television news and debate was an inherent part of that.
‘I’d say old Erskine sits at home reading copies of
Yachting Man
and books about naval battles from three hundred years ago,’ said David. ‘Happy in his own world. And why not?’
Ingrid shrugged. She and David would never agree on this one. He was able to forgive people for not wanting to read four newspapers a day, she wasn’t.
‘You were lucky,’ she said now, ‘sitting beside that gorgeous Laura person.’
‘She was a sweetheart,’ David said. ‘Although she did spend a fair proportion of the evening telling me about her daughter, who’d love to get some experience in the store and has lots of marvellous ideas for fashion design.’
‘God no,’ groaned Ingrid, ‘not another one of those.’
When she went to media parties, she was forever being cornered by people desperately pitching their CVs or their sons’ or daughters’ CVs in the hope of breaking into television via a personal introduction from the powerful and famous Ingrid Fitzgerald. When David went to parties, people told
him about sons and daughters who were clothes designers or who had created a range of pottery that Kenny’s couldn’t afford to be without.
‘Did she sound OK?’ Ingrid asked.
‘She sounded very promising,’ David said. ‘I told her to send the CV to Stacey.’
Stacey O’Shaughnessy was his executive assistant. A wonderfully kind person who ran his office life as expertly as Ingrid ran his home life.
‘You’re a terrible old softie, do you know that, David Kenny?’ Ingrid said.
‘Right back at you,’ he said. ‘You could have flattened poor old Erskine by telling him exactly who you were, but you didn’t, did you?’
‘No,’ Ingrid said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I was mean to the Erskines of this world, even though I disapprove of their ignorance.’
‘I’ll tell that to the Minister for Defence,’ murmured David.
‘Erskine is an old duffer who obviously inherited money and never had to do more than put on an old school tie to get on in the world. The Minister for Defence is a highly paid public representative who should know better than to write character references for a man on trial for rape, just because the accused’s parents happen to live in his constituency. There’s a difference,’ Ingrid said. She could feel herself getting heated again, the way she had before the programme in question. Ingrid never lost it on the show: then, she was coolness personified. She used her passion for her preparation, when she worked out how to phrase her questions in such a way her subject couldn’t avoid answering.
‘True. You were right to nail him,’ David said. ‘He deserved it.’
‘Yes, he did,’ Ingrid sighed, the flare of anger gone. At least David understood why she did what she did. She couldn’t bear injustice. The idea that a government minister’s character
reference could hinder the conviction of a rapist incensed her. David knew her so well, he understood her crusading spirit.
‘Just here is fine, beside those big gates,’ David said to the taxi driver.
They got out and Ingrid found her keys in her handbag while David paid the driver. She was delighted to be home on the early side. It wasn’t even twelve yet. With luck, she’d be asleep before one and get up late the following morning; maybe the two of them could sitting in the conservatory with some coffee, reading the Saturday papers. She had just keyed the security number into the side gate when David joined her.
‘Lie-in tomorrow?’ she said, as they walked up the path to the house.
‘Sorry, afraid not,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to go into the office for a couple of hours. I’ve an absolute ton of work on.’
‘Oh, David,’ she said, ‘you live in the bloody place.’ The words were out before she could stop them. Ingrid hated sounding whingey. Her own job could be all-consuming at times and if anyone understood how work could claim a person, she did.
‘Just for a few hours,’ he said, ‘all right? I’ll be back by two; three at the latest.’
‘OK,’ she said and squeezed his hand. ‘Sunday morning lie-in?’
‘Promise,’ he replied.
‘I’m holding you to that. I have my needs, you know,’ she added in a teasing voice.
‘I know all your needs, Ingrid Kenny,’ he said, ‘and wouldn’t the public love to, too!’ His voice trailed off mischievously.
The dogs greeted them as they opened the front door. While David went to switch off the alarm, Ingrid got down on her knees to pet them. ‘Hello, darlings,’ she said, ‘sorry we were out, but we’re back now.’
Somewhere in the back of her mind was the awareness that David hadn’t reacted in the way he normally did to her flirtatious reference to needs: once, he’d have grabbed her by the hand and taken her upstairs to bed. Instead, he’d made a joke about it.
