Reluctantly Charmed (26 page)

Matthew shook his head, laughing into his wineglass. “Let’s just say I’m coming off that site. It’s going to remain our dirty little secret.”

“Come on. It can’t have been that bad.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “It was.”

“Information, please.”

“Where do I start? She was more thirty-six than twenty-six, divorced and angry about it, had this weird snaggletooth that
crept down her bottom lip, was blond in her picture but brunette in person . . .” He was laughing hard now.

“My worst online dating fears have come true.”

“It gets worse. She went to school with my older brother, and went out with his best friend, Desperate Dan. You know, the guy who’d shag anyone . . .” His eyes were watering with laughter. “And, and . . .” He slapped his leg for emphasis. “She drank water all night.”

I couldn’t stop laughing, either. It was too bad. “Was it the worst night of your life?”

He nodded. “When she told me the company she works for had brilliant maternity leave, it put the stamp on the entire evening.”

“When’s the wedding?”

“July.”

“She’ll probably be knocked up by then.”

“Hopefully. We want a large family.” He collapsed on the couch amid peals of laughter. “Game over. I’m off that website. I’m going back to bad setups.”

“Just stick to what you know—get drunk and pick up. These newfangled crazes like the Internet will never catch on.” I drained my glass of wine.

Matthew cleared the dishes, not allowing me to get up from my sofa coma. He picked at the plates as he went along, chewing the remaining chicken curry and chatting about anything that popped into his head. We decided on a game of Scrabble. I always won, so I was delighted when he suggested it but also slightly suspicious that he was just being kind. He knew that a Scrabble win would make me happy.

Later, after he left, I decided on one more glass of wine, and I did something I’d been putting off since I’d met Maura for
lunch. I googled Frank O’Connor, the defense minister, Maura’s contact. I wanted to know if there was a connection, if he could really be interested in fairies.

Nothing I read online revealed anything extraordinary about Frank O’Connor’s background. A civil servant career had led to a career as a politician, and he’d slowly made his way up the ladder. He was married, had two grown-up children and four grandchildren, was untouched by scandal, and, for all intents and purposes, had led a blemish-free career. I browsed idly through various pictures of him, not sure what I was looking for. Then one photograph caught my eye. It had been taken about five years earlier. He was handing an oversized check to a charity, and there on the little finger of his left hand was a gold signet ring with a large ruby at the center. My heart stopped for a moment in shock. I zoomed in. There was no doubt in my mind: the ring was just like Maura’s. What did it mean? Had he given it to Maura?

Frantically, I attacked the shelves in my flat and found the book on Liam McCarthy that Dad had lent me. My heart was racing as I flicked through the pages to the photographs. They were old black-and-white photographs. Where was his left hand? Often hidden in his jacket or clasped behind his back. Where was it?

And then I saw it: a ring on his little finger that looked identical to Maura’s and Frank O’Connor’s. It must have been a secret sect, a cult. What were they doing? What did they want?

I stared at the photographs, not sure what to do next. I was nervous. Maura was right. They were powerful people and there seemed to be a lot of them, and only one of me.

20

I
t was Friday, the day of the shoot. We were hours into shooting but still David Hasselhoff hadn’t arrived. His flight had been delayed.

I’d spent the night in the hotel near the studio. When I’d planned out my journey from flat to studio, taking into account the paparazzi chase, changing taxis, ducking and diving, it was going to take me about four hours. So I decided to get a head start on everyone and took off twenty-four hours before the shoot, winding down back alleys and speeding up motorways. I stayed in a Travelodge near the industrial estate in west Dublin where the shoot was taking place. It had cardboard walls, a sticky patterned carpet, and the lumpiest bed I’ve ever encountered.

I didn’t get a wink of sleep, but I was on time for the six o’clock shoot. We were in a giant echoing warehouse, ten miles outside of the city, and there were wires and cameras everywhere. I was the first to arrive, and as soon as I stepped onto the set, the director press-ganged me into an intense conference about the script and lighting. When he let me go hours later, the Hoff still hadn’t arrived.

I was only mildly concerned. He’d get there eventually—planes
had to land at some point. In the meantime, there was a feast of breakfast delights to snack on: croissants, pancakes, fresh fruit, and stacks of bacon.

Matthew was glugging down pancakes with maple syrup. He didn’t look up to say good morning.

I sidled up and shoulder-nudged him. “Hi.”

He looked over and nodded. His mouth was full.

“No sign of the Hoff?”

He shook his head.

“He’ll get here eventually.”

A nod.

“The bacon’s good.”

A nod and a grunt.

There was no point talking to Matthew when there was food around: it always turned into a one-way conversation. “I’m going to chat with Colin.”

Colin looked like he needed calming down. He was pacing up and down, buckled over like a perfectly shaped letter
r
, his eyes boring a hole into his shoes. His hands hung past his knees, fingers folded into a nervous fist. I could hear him chewing anxiously as I got closer. He was quietly talking to himself.

“. . . of course he’ll arrive. I’ll just say he was late . . . of course he’ll arrive.”

“Hey.” I shuffled beside him and automatically copied his pace. He straightened up slightly and seemed to snap out of his trance.

“Of course he’ll arrive.” He looked at me and I realized from his expression that this was a question.

“Of course he’ll arrive,” I repeated in a soothing fashion.

“It’s a hundred twenty grand a day, a hundred twenty grand a day,” he said into his mustache. “The agency will have to bury
the costs, we’ll have to bury the costs. How?” He turned on his heel and retraced his footsteps for the hundredth time. “How?”

I bit my lip and scurried along with him, conscious that anything I might say would probably be the wrong answer.

“Günter Lindz will be here soon. He wants to see David Hasselhoff. He wants to see David Hasselhoff.” Colin stopped. Still talking into his mustache and looking at his shoes, he mumbled: “The agency can’t afford this. People will lose their jobs if we don’t get this campaign right.”

I strained my ears to listen to his rantings. Job cuts would be disastrous. My job was the only thing keeping me going.

Colin picked up the pace. He was back to figures: “It’s too much—a hundred twenty grand a day, a hundred twenty grand a day.” He froze again, midtrot, and stopped talking.

I straightened up and offered to get him some breakfast, as if breakfast could solve everything.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” he said, seeing me as if for the first time. “Can you get an update on where David Hasselhoff is?”

Happy to be of any use in a crisis, I sped off to my lever-arch folder, stuffed with contacts for David Hasselhoff: PAs’ phone numbers, agents’ numbers, agents’ PAs’ numbers, airline details.

They nearly all gave me the same answer: David Hasselhoff was in Dublin on the set of a Starshoot commercial with Kate McDaid, a great personal friend.

Only the airline was more useful. The plane was currently circling Dublin, but bad weather meant they could not predict the landing time.

“But it will land, won’t it?” I shouted into the phone.

“They all have to land.” The woman laughed.

I sensed another potential problem. “It will land in Dublin?”

“All I can say is that the plane will land.”

Oh dear
, I thought,
oh dear.

It was all hands on deck for the big day, so Marjorie was on the shoot. Her hair was pulled into a severe, headache-inducing ponytail that matched her black business suit and dominatrix-style heels. Her eyes darted around the studio, aware that an opportunity to shine might arise at any moment. “Kate? Any calls I can make for you?” she asked.

“Can you get through to a mobile phone on an airplane?”

She studied my face, her brain obviously scrolling through possibilities. “It’s against the law to leave your mobile on on planes,” she said, deadpan.

“I know, Marjorie. That’s why we have a problem.” I couldn’t help but smirk to myself: the cold sore on her mouth had spread, erupting all over her bottom lip.

“It’s not a problem, Kate. It’s an opportunity.”

“Marjorie, it’s a problem.” I rolled my eyes at her. Now was not the time for forced optimism. This was serious. No Hoff, no ad.

“We just see things differently, then,” she said, before pirouetting off toward Colin, probably to tell him that we had “an opportunity” to tackle.

The shoot director was pacing in a somewhat jauntier manner than Colin, but looking equally nervous. He was wearing a beret, which I’d been assured was an ironic fashion statement, and a pair of large denim dungarees, the cuffs of which fell over his battered Vans runners. He’d spent the last four hours trying to shoot around the Hoff, which was impossible, considering the Hoff was in every shot. Every angle of the Starshoot bar had been filmed.

He and the crew were nervously chomping into Starshoots like greedy children, and had made an impressive dent in the latest pile of free samples.

I spotted Matthew slowly backing away from the breakfast buffet. He looked stoned and was breathing heavily.

I pounced. “Problem,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth.

He looked at me with glazed eyes.

“The Hoff is still up there circling and may not even land in Dublin. This might all need to be pushed back a day or a day and a half, but it costs so much money, and, anyway, he can give us only twenty-four hours for the shoot. Colin’s seriously talking about job cuts.”

The gravity of the situation woke Matthew from his food stupor. “What’ll we do?”

Before either of us could answer we both jumped in fright at the sound of a door squeaking loudly, like fingernails running up a blackboard. A puff of stinging aftershave exploded and crackled into the room. We heard the confident
clip-clop
of Cuban heels on cement floor. And there they were: the Little Prince and his entourage, looking hungrily around the room, expecting to see their idol. They’d come by train from the north of Ireland, where apparently they’d spent the previous three days at a global chocolate conference titled “The Future of Chocolate—Berries!”

The Little Prince’s gray silk suit reflected every glimmer of light in the room, creating a halo effect around his tiny body. He saw immediately that the Hoff was not present. Seeing Colin, who had creaked his back upward, the Little Prince headed for him like an excited torpedo. Colin broke into a grin that I recognized as pure panic and ran toward his client. They huddled together on the far side of the room, backslapping and guffawing. Shouts of “Good, yah, good!” bounced around the cavernous warehouse.

Matthew looked at me, worried. “I don’t think he’s told him, somehow.”

“I don’t think so, either,” I replied.

The Little Prince was beaming from ear to ear, his face luminous with joy. He waved like an Oscar winner as he and his entourage exited. Matthew and I both gave him a thumbs-up sign, and then slapped one another’s hands down immediately.

“What are you doing?” Matthew hissed.

“I dunno,” I said, suddenly feeling ashamed and betrayed by my thumbs. “I just got caught up in the moment. He looked so happy. You did it, too.”

“I was copying you.”

“We’re dead.”

Colin, who had aged fifty years in five minutes, hobbled toward me, wringing his hands in despair.

“Do—do—do you have any news?”

“Emmm.”

Matthew nudged me.
Just tell him.

And so I did, and I watched a grown man cry. Big fat tears careened down the crevices of Colin’s face. Somebody pulled up a chair and he collapsed onto it, the full extent of his devastation playing out in a series of whimpers and sobs. “Th-that’s it. It’s over.”

I awkwardly patted his shoulder. “The Little Prince seemed to take it well. Very well, in fact.”

Colin arched his back at me and rolled his eyes in disbelief. “I told him the Hoff was getting his makeup done in his dressing room. He’s coming back to meet him in an hour.”

Matthew and I looked at each other, scared.

“Maybe he’ll understand,” Matthew butted in.

“We’re going to lose the account. We’re going to have to cover the cost of the shoot. Jobs are gone, gone. There’s a recession
knocking on our door, and we’re going to be one of the first to take the fall.” His voice was high-pitched and squeaky.

The director and his crew had begun circling the crumpled Colin.

“Should we just pack up then, mate?” the director shouted across without an ounce of sympathy. “Suits me. We can go to the pub.” There was a murmur of approval from the rest of the crew at the prospect of a pint at half-ten in the morning.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” Colin sobbed into his hands.

Matthew, normally good in a crisis, pulled me out of the crowd and over to the side of the room. “What’ll we do? We have to fix this,” he whispered. “The promotion, maybe even our jobs, everything rests on this.”

“I know!” My hands flew out, palms facing up to the sky. “But I don’t know what we can do. What do you think?”

The crew had started to shuffle around the room. Some were putting on jackets and picking up bags, ready to bolt for the door as soon as they got the nod.

“Kate.” Prodded by a poker, Colin rose up.

I looked over expectantly. Could he have a solution? I strode back to him.

“You could fix this.” His eyes were clear and his nostrils flared.