One Hundred Names (11 page)

‘It’s been going on for a while. We’ve been slowly getting in contact with each other.’ Steve distracted himself with more bread, avoiding her eyes; he was never comfortable talking about anything personal. He mumbled the next part quite well. ‘Then Katja and Dad met and they surprisingly get along, and …’

He rattled on about the change in his life, none of which Kitty heard as she was still stuck on the word ‘Katja’.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

She realised he’d stopped talking.

‘Oh. Well. I thought I heard you say the name “Katja” and I got confused.’

‘I did.’

‘
Katja
,’ she repeated loudly as though he were deaf.

‘Yes,’ he smiled, amused at her.

‘The girl you went out for dinner with a few months ago?’

‘Yes, and who I’m still going out with,’ he confirmed, his cheeks turning pink and giving it all away.

Their main course arrived – two beef fillets – but suddenly Kitty didn’t feel hungry. ‘Katja,’ she repeated. ‘You never men-tioned you two were going out.’

‘Well, we are.’

‘Like boyfriend and girlfriend?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘You never mentioned you’d broken up with Glen.’

‘Because you found out before I did.’

‘I did?’

‘The coffee machine.’

Realisation passed over his face. ‘He just left?’

‘Something like that.’

‘He was a prick anyway.’

‘I thought you liked him.’

Steve shook his head, mouth full.

She sighed. ‘Did anyone like him?’

He swallowed. ‘You did.’

‘I was hoping for more people than that.’

‘Crusty liked him.’

They laughed. Crusty was Steve’s fourteen-year-old dog who he’d taken in from a shelter four years ago. No one had known his name but he had looked crusty then and even after a wash, his appearance never altered very much. It was the perfect name. Despite getting on in years, Crusty always managed to find the energy to hump Glen’s leg, which had always disgusted Glen and probably caused him silently to question his sexuality along with everything else in life he over-analysed, such as what kind of a woman he had found himself living with after the Colin Maguire case.

‘So how long have you been together? Two months?’

‘Five.’

‘Five? Jesus, Steve, you might as well get married. I should buy a hat.’

‘Don’t. They give away your Spock ears.’

She laughed. ‘This is the Romanian girl?’

‘Croatian.’

‘Right. She’s a painter?’

‘Photographer.’

‘Right.’ She studied him.

‘What?’ he laughed self-consciously as though he was a twelve-year-old boy who’d just been caught with his first girlfriend.

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on.’

‘I don’t know, Steve,’ she cut into her meat, ‘you’ve changed. You no longer write about Victoria Beckham and you have a girlfriend. I think …’

‘You think what?’

‘I don’t know, I might be jumping the gun here, but I
think
there’s a possibility you might not be gay after all.’

A chip was hurled at her head.

Kitty spent the remainder of the meal eating as though she had a chip stuck in the back of her throat. Food wasn’t going down easily and she didn’t know why. She used to find comfort in the fact that Steve had an appalling job that he hated and refused to settle down. His realising that changes needed to be made in his life, and then making them, was upsetting. She simply didn’t want to be the only one with problems.

‘How is your new story going?’ he asked, finally filling the uncomfortable silence.

‘Oh,’ Kitty sighed, feeling drained by it already. ‘I don’t know. I met a very nice old lady tonight who told me about her very nice life and it’s all sounding very nice, but nothing …’ she scrunched her hands together, ‘nothing meaty, nothing juicy. I need to dig around in her cupboard for a few skeletons or something. Something that’s not so “very nice”. This is my chance to prove myself to so many people – probably my
last
chance – and whatever it was that Constance saw, I’m sure as hell not seeing it. It’s a little frustrating.’

Steve was quiet. She looked at him and his whole body had tensed up. His jaw had squared and he was looking at her as if he wanted to inflict physical pain on her.

‘Have you spoken to Colin Maguire yet?’

‘I will phone him right now if it stops you from saying whatever horrible thing is on the tip of your tongue.’

‘So it’s about you again,’ he snapped. ‘You apologising to him is all about you.’ His sudden change of mood took her by surprise.

‘I was joking, Steve, but go on, I see you’re in the mood to rip me to shreds again.’ Before he had the chance to do so, she dived in, ‘Just so you know, I am truly sorry about what happened to him.’

‘What
happened
to him? Something didn’t just happen to him, Kitty,
you
caused it, you
actively
caused it, not some random unexplained unlucky event that just
happened.
’

‘I know that! Okay, I phrased it wrong. I can’t win with you. Of course I know it’s my fault. I have a bloody conscience, you know. I will be sorry every single day for the rest of my life.’

‘
After
the fact,’ he said, confusing her. ‘You’re always sorry
after
you do something. You never think about how they feel or how you’d feel
before
. That’s what annoys me. You’ve learned nothing from the Colin Maguire situation. Here you are interviewing a nice little old lady and her nice little story is not enough for you. You always want more.’

Kitty was so shocked by his mood swing that her eyes stung with hot frustrated tears. She looked around and tried to focus on everything else around her to stop the tears from falling. Kitty didn’t cry easily but she was having an emotional time lately and she had never been so out of favour with Steve. His opinion was of high importance to her. She had heard her mother accuse her of everything under the sun since January but nothing –
nothing
– could affect her as much as one simple look of disappointment from Steve.

They finished their meat in silence, she paid the bill and they walked in silence to her flat.

‘I’ll make sure it’s safe,’ Steve said quietly, running up the stairs to check the area.

The door that led to the stairs up to her flat was always left open. As much as Kitty had pleaded with the landlords they couldn’t lock it as it was the shared door to the second internal door, which led to the dry-cleaners. This meant that at any time of the day anybody could walk up the stairs to her door.

‘It’s okay,’ he said, coming back down. ‘Stinks of shit, though.’

‘Thanks for coming over. I really appreciate it. Especially now that you have a girlfriend,’ she teased childishly, elbowing him.

‘She wants to meet you,’ he said, softening.

‘Yeah, cool, that would be great,’ she said over-enthusiastically, and it was obvious. ‘Well, I’d better get inside before somebody chucks a water balloon filled with vomit at my head. I’m glad you’re happy, Steve.’ She tried to make it sound jolly and genuine but all that she heard was her own voice saying,
Your happiness makes me jealous and unhappy, Steve. I am a bitter and twisted human being.

She blocked her nose and mouth with her jacket as she ran up the steps to her flat and tried to convince herself that the unbearable stench was the reason for her crying.

‘Here we are in Arnotts, on their new personal shopping floor, and with me is top super shopper to the stars Eva Wu and author of the internationally renowned blog, “Dedicated”.’

Kitty stood to the side of the television camera along with Gaby, Eva’s PR girl, and watched, along with the dozen other shoppers who had gathered at the sight of the camera. The first thing the head cameraman on
Thirty Minutes
had taught her on her first day of filming was that the camera was an ‘asshole magnet’. As soon as you took it out in public it encouraged a plethora of ridiculous self-conscious behaviour from otherwise mostly normal people. Many of Kitty’s pieces to camera had been destroyed by idiots standing behind her in her shot waving at their mothers.

Kitty was at the department store on Henry Street in Dublin to interview Eva Wu. Unable to sleep after her second confrontation with Steve, she had spent much of the night reading up about Eva and her blog. Gaby had been more than keen on her coming here today as she had phoned Kitty three times already that morning. As Gaby was a rather pushy, loud-mouthed, fast-talking stereotypical PR girl who made things happen even when nature and the universe conspired against making them happen, Kitty imagined Eva to be quite the opposite. She wasn’t as loud as Gaby, and Kitty had to strain her ears to hear her voice. She appeared to be more reserved, quiet, but not shy.

Eva was being interviewed by one of the lead TV presenters of
The Scoop
, whose personal life was currently being played out on the front pages of the tabloid papers.
The Scoop
was a gossip and showbiz programme that also focused on beauty and fashion.

‘So, Eva,’ the presenter with the frozen forehead and overly plumped top lip said into her oversized microphone with
The Scoop
’s logo emblazoned across the front. ‘Give us The Scoop, what was it like meeting Brad Pitt?’

Eva smiled politely. ‘Sorry, Laura, but I, er, I didn’t meet Brad Pitt.’

Laura looked down at her notes. ‘Cut,’ she said, her big smile fading immediately. She looked at the camerawoman. ‘Let’s start that again.’ And on the count of three her smile was back on her face. ‘So, Eva, give us The Scoop, what was it like meeting George Clooney?’

Eva looked rather nervously and a little angrily in Gaby’s direction.

‘I didn’t actually meet George Clooney. What happened is that a company who were working with him contacted me and asked if I would buy a gift for him on their behalf.’

‘Ooh, George Clooney, girls!’ Laura pulled her microphone away from Eva’s mouth and screeched into it excitedly, looking directly at the hand-held camera. The camera, almost in response to her excited squeal tilted and darted at an angle towards them both. Hoping to avoid an on-air collision, Eva jerked backwards on the high stool, not looking very cool in the process. Gaby held her head in her hands.

‘So what did you buy him? An exclusive here on
The Scoop
.’ Laura looked at the camera excitedly again and then back to Eva. ‘Spill the beans!’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ Eva said pleasantly but coolly, ‘but I declined the job, which really does explain my company ethos.’ She brightened up then, excited to be talking about her baby. ‘I developed “Dedicated” so that I can personally dedicate my time to finding the perfect gift for the perfect person. In order to do that, I like to spend time with the person so that I can really get a sense of what it is that their heart truly desires. I can’t shop for someone I don’t know or else how is it personal shopping?’

Gaby covered her head in her hands and cringed, directly in Eva’s eyeline.

Laura’s eyes had glazed over halfway through Eva’s spiel and Kitty could bet her savings, not that there was much, that most if not all of what Eva had said would end up on the cutting-room floor. All Eva had to do was make a sexually derogatory comment about George Clooney and the producers of the show would have been delighted. Sincere as Eva sounded, to Kitty’s critical and arguably cynical ear, she wasn’t quite sure if she believed in Eva’s ethos or if she really believed that Eva believed in her ethos, but her personal shopping idea was different and it stood out from the rest of the market. She supposed that’s what companies were looking to do. It seemed quite a long way to go about doing something quite as simple as buying a present.

The man next to Eva was throwing her dagger looks at her last comment.

‘Beside Eva, we have Arnotts’ personal shopper, Jack Wilson. So, Jack, tell us about some of the things you’ll be purchasing this year for your clients.’

‘Well,’ he looked directly at the camera, ‘we have this Tom Ford iPad sleeve. Perfect for the man in your life who loves designer accessories. It will also keep the iPad protected from the sand on upcoming summer hols. It retails at one thousand five hundred euro, which is a great price for such a luxury.’

Eva’s eyes widened.

‘Stop it,’ Gaby muttered under her breath and the sound man threw her a look.

‘We also have this Coco Chanel umbrella. Perfect for the lady in your life who doesn’t like to get wet.’

‘Great for the frizzy-hair, girls,’ Laura said to the camera, and the camera went wild in response, moving in so close to her face it almost headbutted her.

‘And that retails at one thousand euro.’

Eva’s mouth dropped, as did Kitty’s, but Kitty wasn’t currently on camera. She could feel Gaby raging beside her.

‘What celebrities will you be shopping for?’ Laura asked.

‘Oh, we get them all in here.’ Jack proceeded to list any stars who were known to be jetting into the Irish capital for summer concerts and Kitty noted his use of the word ‘possibly’ before he named anyone.

‘Wow. Hear that guys? Madonna! Moving on, Eva, these sunglasses we see on the likes of Victoria Beckham and Katie Holmes, who would you see yourself buying these for?’

‘Of my clients?’

‘Come on, come on,’ Gaby urged.

‘Well, my client list is strictly private, I wouldn’t—’

‘Yes, but what
kind
of person would you buy these for?’

‘Who would I buy sunglasses for?’ She looked around as if someone was playing a trick on her.

‘Worn by Victoria Beckham and Katie Holmes,’ Laura said through gritted teeth. Eva’s mouth opened and closed but no words would come out.

‘Well, can I just say,’ Jack jumped in, ‘these glasses would be perfect for the women in your life who just love Victoria Beckham and Katie Holmes and who don’t want the sun in their eyes this summer.’

‘So there you have it, guys, top tips on how to buy the perfect gift for that extra special person in your life to help them feel like a celebrity.’