Semi-Sweet (8 page)

“It’s Leah Bradshaw.” Geraldine’s voice floated in from the hall as she hung her coat.

Stephen didn’t turn from the computer. “What is?” he called back.

Geraldine walked into the sitting room, rubbing her hands together. “God, it’s chilly out tonight. Leah Bradshaw is the girl
Patrick left Hannah for.”

Stephen looked across the room at his wife. “Who is she? Do we know her?”

Geraldine poked the fire before tipping in coal from the scuttle. “I wish you’d keep this going when I’m out. She’s Fiona
Bradshaw’s daughter.” She waited for a reaction and getting none, she added impatiently, “Fiona Bradshaw, who I play bridge
with. You know her—she has some environment job with the town council. You met her at Aoife’s cocktail party in November.
Tall, dyed red hair. Too thin. And she came here when I did the Alzheimer’s tea thing—she brought those orchids that died.
I remember you asking her about them.”

“Oh, yes,” Stephen said, knowing that it didn’t matter in the least that he had absolutely no memory of Fiona Bradshaw. “So
it’s her daughter.”

“And to think,” Geraldine said angrily, pushing the poker through the fresh coals, “that I supported that girl when she opened
her salon. I paid good money for a manicure, and I wasn’t well out the door when one of my nails smudged; they weren’t dry
at all. I should have gone back, only I didn’t want to embarrass her.”

Stephen felt the conversation slipping away from him. “How are you so sure it’s her? Did her mother tell you?”

Geraldine snorted. “Of course she didn’t tell me—she hasn’t come near me since it happened. Too ashamed of what her brazen
daughter has done, no doubt. Maureen Hardiman told me, delighted to have a bit of scandal to report, as usual. Naturally,
I let on I knew already.”

“Good for you.” Stephen’s fingers crept back toward the keyboard, reluctant to abandon the first Scrabble game in ages that
he was showing any signs of winning.

“Small slip of a thing,” Geraldine said, settling onto the couch and picking up the remote control. “Don’t know what he sees
in her. Dyed hair, of course, like her mother. Can you see Hannah ever having to dye her hair?” She pressed a button on the
remote, and the television flicked on. “Oh, not that fellow again—he’s always on the
Late Late
. Must have written a book.”

“Mm-hmm.” Stephen typed in
“cousin”
as quietly as he could, and his score jumped to 176.

“I’ll have to tell her,” Geraldine said, still watching the television.

Stephen swung toward her again. “Tell who? Hannah?”

“Of course, Hannah. She’ll have to hear it from me.”

“Why? Won’t that only upset her?”

Geraldine looked at him, incredulous. “Stephen, do you really think she wouldn’t find out? In a place the size of Clongarvin,
it’ll be all over town in no time. I’d prefer she heard it from me than from some gossip like Maureen Hardiman.”

Hannah’s father returned to his Scrabble game. He’d long since given up trying to understand the workings of his wife’s mind.
Far easier to figure out what to do with a
q
, a
b
, three
e
’s, and a couple of
p
’s.

Vintage was Clongarvin’s first wine bar. It was all dark wood, subdued lighting, and low couches arranged around candlelit
tables. Not exactly what Adam was used to when he went out for a drink.

He sat alone on a barstool by the counter—at least they had a few barstools—having failed to persuade Hannah to accompany
him. He hadn’t pressed her too hard: maybe a night of doing nothing more strenuous than lying in warm, sudsy water was what
she needed this weekend. And going out on his own had never bothered him. Clongarvin being the size it was, and this being
Saturday night, he was reasonably sure of bumping into someone he knew before too long.

In the meantime he was content to drink his Guinness—thankfully, the stock wasn’t limited to wine—and watch the woman who’d
caught his attention pretty much as soon as he’d walked in.

She was the only female member of the group of four musicians performing on the small, slightly raised area—you could hardly
call it a stage—in a corner of the room, diagonally across from where he sat.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful—no, he really couldn’t call her that. There was certainly something striking about the neat,
pointed features, but she wasn’t beautiful. Her hair, some pale color he couldn’t determine, was pulled off her face by a
wide black hair band and captured into some kind of low ponytail. No tendril escaped, so there was nothing to suggest the
length or the texture of it.

Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of small, round, dark-rimmed glasses. From this distance he couldn’t be sure, but he thought
her hands were broad, the knuckles jutting sharply from her splayed fingers as they traveled over the keys of her instrument,
which, from Adam’s very limited knowledge of musical instruments, appeared to be a clarinet.

She was dressed entirely in black. A high-necked blouse fell in sharp pleats to her waist, where it was gathered into a wide
belt made of some shiny material. A long, loose skirt stopped just short of her ankles, meeting a pair of black boots with
pointed toes. The whole of her body was covered, apart from her hands and face. There was no clue to the shape that lay beneath
the stiff folds of her top or the drapes below.

Not beautiful, no. Not in the least pretty. Unsmiling, wholly focused on the music they played. She sat hunched in her seat,
her chair set back a fraction from her companions’, giving the suggestion that she was trying to distance herself from the
whole affair.

And yet Adam watched her. What drew him to examine that frowning face, to wonder what color the eyes were behind their glass
barriers, to imagine undoing the ponytail, peeling off the black hair band, and watching the pale hair tumble downward?

The other three musicians were male, and casually dressed in white shirts and chinos. One played a keyboard, another an enormous
version of a violin that could equally have been a cello or a double bass, and the third had what Adam was reasonably sure
was a saxophone.

He enjoyed the sound they produced. They played old favorites—“You Go to My Head” and “Blue Moon” and “These Foolish Things”—and show tunes like “On the Street Where You Live” and “I Feel Pretty,” and a few Beatles hits, and a couple
of movie themes—and the treatment they gave each tune, the subtle rhythms they introduced, made the songs fresh and lively
and interesting. It was music you couldn’t help tapping a foot along to.

The female musician seemed unaware of her surroundings. The buzz of chatter in the wine bar didn’t appear to bother her; she
didn’t react to the smattering of applause at the end of each piece. She flicked the pages on the stand in front of her and
glanced now and again at one or another of her fellow musicians as they moved on to another tune, but she was distanced somehow
from the warm, busy room.

“Adam, over here.” A couple he knew were gesturing to him from the far end of the counter. He took his drink and joined them,
and the next time he looked toward the musicians’ platform, half an hour later, all that remained were two music stands and
three chairs, on one of which was perched an empty half-pint glass.

“Leah Bradshaw,” Geraldine said. “She opened a beauty salon on Russell Street a few years back. Not much of a place, if you
ask me.”

“I know it,” Hannah said bleakly. “I was there.”

“Small, skinny thing,” Geraldine said. “Her figure isn’t half as nice as yours.” She stopped. “You were there? When?”

“Oh…months ago, I don’t remember exactly.”

She remembered exactly. Eight months ago, early summer, when Patrick’s back had been stiff after he’d dug up the hedge.

“Do you know her?” Geraldine asked. “Did you get something done there?”

“No…I bought a gift certificate for a massage. A present for someone.”

A back massage,
Hannah had said.
A gift.
She remembered Leah Bradshaw, remembered recognizing her vaguely from school, but they’d have been in different years.

“How did you hear?” she asked her mother. “Who told you?”

“Oh, just some old gossip at bridge with nothing better to do,” Geraldine said. “I can’t for the life of me see why he’d prefer
her. Even if you are my daughter, there’s no comparison. Some men need their heads examined.”

Some men obviously preferred their women blond and petite, with the kind of boyish figure—small breasts, slim hips—that Hannah
had always envied. Nails short and beautifully shaped, painted pale pink. Hannah had noticed the nails as Leah took her sixty
euro and wrote
“back massage”
on the gift voucher, which was colored lavender like the walls of the reception area.

“Her mother plays bridge with me,” Geraldine said. “Fiona Bradshaw. I don’t think you know her. Not someone you’d warm to,
bit of a cold fish.”

I like the color of your hair,
Leah had said to Hannah.
Very rich…and a lovely shine to it.

“You’re better off without him,” her mother said, “although I know that’s not much comfort now, love.”

See you again,
she’d said as Hannah had turned to leave the salon.
Thanks a lot, take care.

“I felt I should tell you,” Geraldine said. “I didn’t want you hearing it from someone else. You didn’t mind me saying it?”

Had Patrick known her already? Had Hannah innocently bought him forty-five minutes alone with his other woman? Had they laughed
about that as Leah massaged his naked, oiled skin, her slender body leaning over his? Or had they bothered with the massage
at all? Maybe they’d found something more interesting to do with each other.

Or—worse, much worse—had Hannah introduced them? Had she been the one who’d brought them together? The thought stopped her
in her tracks, the awfulness of it.

“Are you still there?” her mother asked.

“Yes,” Hannah answered. “Still here.”

Confidence shattered, heart in bits, utterly miserable, but still there.

“You don’t mind that I told you? You’re not cross with me?”

“No, of course not…Look,” she said, “I have to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Leah Bradshaw. Was it better to have a name and a face? Did that make it any easier? Or was it worse to know exactly who had
stolen Patrick from her? She flipped her phone closed and slid it into her pocket before grabbing the shopping cart again
and pushing it toward the yellow van. What did any of it matter, when he was still gone and she was still alone?

As she unloaded the cart, piling bags into the back of the van, a man passed her wearing a navy jacket and a dark green woolly
hat. A rucksack that looked heavy was hanging off one shoulder. “Hello,” he said. “Nice evening.”

“Hi,” she answered, unsmiling because a smile was out of the question.

He seemed vaguely familiar. He unlocked a nearby taxi and slung his rucksack onto the backseat before getting in himself.
He must have driven her somewhere, not that she took taxis too often.

As she negotiated the little van out of the car park a few minutes later, she turned abruptly back in the direction of the
town and drove through emptying early-evening streets until she came to Indulgence. She pulled in to a space across the road
and sat, engine idling.

She studied the prettily painted frontage. The downstairs windows were dark, the salon closed at this hour. On the first floor,
a light shone faintly from one of the two tall, narrow windows.

Were they inside now? Was she cooking dinner for him—or were they sprawled in front of a television, the way she and Patrick
used to do? Was she telling him about her day while he poured her a glass of wine?

If he looked out he’d see the van, with the shop name written clearly on the side. He’d know she was there, he’d realize she
must have discovered Leah Bradshaw’s identity.

The street was quiet, most workers gone home and cozying up for the night. Hannah glanced around, saw a few scattered pedestrians,
a man dismounting from a bicycle, a dog sniffing at a lamppost.