Upside Down Inside Out (3 page)

Rosemary noted that. ‘And how is Kate, Joseph?’

Joseph looked up from the letters he was studying and smiled briefly. ‘She’s much better, Rosemary, thanks.’

‘Oh, that’s good.’ She didn’t enquire any more about his mother’s cancer scare. Joseph kept himself to himself, pretty much. She’d once dared to ask him how he was when she’d realised he and his girlfriend Tessa had broken up. It was as if a shutter had come down over his face.

‘Now, I need your signature on these,’ she said, getting back to business and handing over a pile of paperwork. ‘And your answers to a few queries. There’s a request from that new design magazine to do a profile on you, full-page photo, interview, you know the sort of thing.’

‘No thanks,’ Joseph said.

No surprise there, Rosemary thought. Joseph hated doing media interviews. The journalist would be disappointed, though. She’d sounded very keen indeed to follow Joseph around for a few days.

‘Two requests from design students, asking about the possibility of work experience here.’

‘That’s fine. A week each, once I get back from Australia.’

Rosemary nodded. ‘Next item. The website designer rang to say he’s finished the updates to your site. I saw it this morning, it looks good. Lots of information, more photos. I think you’ll be pleased.’

Joseph pressed a few keys on the computer beside him. There was a flash of colour on the screen then the Wheeler Design website came up. He quickly scrolled through, clicking from page to page. ‘Great stuff. I’ll call him later and tell him.’

‘I’ve had an email from the Canadian company, too. Wondering if you’ve made a decision about their offer as yet.’

Joseph glanced at the paperwork again. ‘I’ll look at it again today, I hope. Can you please put them off

for another few days? In fact, until I get back from Australia.’

‘Of course.’

‘Thanks, Rosemary. And are you sure you’ve enough time to help the auditor while I’m away? We can get a couple of temps in if your workload is too much.’

She smiled at him. Her last boss wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been buried under her desk in paperwork. ‘I should be fine, Joseph, thank you. That’s all for the moment. I’ll shut the door behind me, will I?’

He nodded. ‘Thanks.’

After she’d gone he stood up, coffee cup in hand, and walked over to the big window. The rain was pelting against the glass, obscuring the view of the Hoxton shops and bars two floors down. He felt like he was in a carwash.

The paperwork on his desk was like a siren calling him over. He resisted it for a while longer, looking around the office instead. He’d designed it himself when he’d first moved in to the old warehouse five years before. Wheeler Design shared the building with ten other companies, everything from graphic designers to freelance journalists. The first couple of years had been great, like a social and work co-operative. But these days he hardly had the time to talk to any of the others, let alone socialise.

‘You’re on the high road to success now, Joseph,’ Maurice had said that morning as he handed over the

hundred-page document outlining the conditions and patent situation if Joseph were to take the job with the Canadian luggage company. They’d invited him to base himself in Toronto for six months to work with their team on a new version of his backpack. The work would be long and hard, but the money and prestige would more than compensate. This was the high road to success? It was filled with potholes then, he thought. Exhaustion. Headaches. Meetings, contracts and paperwork. It was ironic, really. He was such a successful designer he didn’t get time to actually design any more. Joseph ran his fingers through his hair. What a day. And what a day yesterday had been. And the weeks and months before that. He felt more like sixty-four years old than the thirty-four he was. What had happened to his life? He was feeling more and more like he was barely clinging on. All this paperwork and all these details were hurtling past him and he was getting just a glimpse as they rushed by. He had to concentrate. If this headache would go away, he could. He went back to his desk and started reading the tiny print of the Canadian contract again.

This document confirms the details of the proposed contract agreement between Joseph Wheeler of Wheeler Design of Hoxton, London, hereafter known as the Consultant and…

It was no good. He wasn’t taking it in. He looked out the window again. Why was he putting it off? This was what all that hard work had been about, wasn’t it? Finetuning his designs. Doing all the research. Making all the prototypes. So he’d get approaches like this?

Three years ago an offer like this one would have consumed him. Thrilled him. Sent his blood pumping.

But now? Today? He just felt like picking up the contract and throwing it straight in the bin.

‘Oh, Evie, that looks gorgeous.”

Eva turned and smiled at her young cousin. ‘Thanks, Meg.’ She was very pleased with the latest window display herself. She’d been working on it all afternoon, carefully arranging a balancing act of shiny purple aubergines, bright red chillies and plump heads of garlic, surrounded by long, elegant bottles of olive oil.

It was like a still-life painting, she decided. But it just needed a few more bits and pieces. Some preserved pears, perhaps, all golden and round in their jars. The handmade chocolates? Or a selection of the freshly baked biscuits in their little cellophane wrapped bundles?

Meg was inspecting the display closely. ‘Could I try to do one of these while you’re away, Eva? They look so artistic, don’t they? I don’t know where you get your ideas from at all.’

‘Those three years I spent at art school, maybe,’ Eva said mildly.

‘Oh, that’s right, I forgot about those. I only ever think of you as a shop assistant, I suppose.’

Eva blinked. Perhaps a person’s tact gene only kicked in at the age of nineteen, she thought. Or perhaps Meg had missed out on hers altogether.

Meg was oblivious in any case. ‘It’s such great fun here, Evie. Not like work at all. Did I tell you a lady came in yesterday and asked me for quail’s eggs, can you believe it? What size would they be, do you think? God, quails are tiny enough themselves, their eggs would be like peas, wouldn’t they?’ Meg gave a merry laugh.

‘Then another lady came in and asked did we serve hot soup. She said she was freezing and walking past, smelt the bread and thought, Mmm, imagine a nice hunk of that bread and a big bowl of freshly made soup, not that packet stuff most of the pubs sell.’ Meg took a deep breath, then kept going. ‘I told her that, sorry, we didn’t serve soup but I’d certainly talk to you and Ambrose about it. Bernadette and Maura, my teachers at Ardmahon House, always said you should never dismiss a customer’s request out of hand. They said it’s better to thank them for the idea and say you’d see what you could do. That way they feel like you really care about them as customers. Could we do that, do you think, Eva?’

Eva was trying to keep up. ‘Do what, Meg, sorry?’ ‘Serve hot soup.’ ‘Where?’ ‘In the shop.’ ‘Where could we serve it?’ ‘Oh, I mean to take away, in the first instance. Unless we put a few tables and chairs in the storeroom.’ Meg laughed. That’d be cosy, wouldn’t it? “Yes sir, that table there is free, just next to those tins of tomatoes.”’ Eva opened her mouth to answer, then shut it as Meg started talking again. ‘And I just can’t wait to start serving behind the counter. And helping Ambrose in the storeroom, too.’ ‘You’re not still nervous of him, I hope?’ Eva finally got a word in, keeping her voice low. ‘His bark really is much worse than his bite.’ Meg whispered, ‘I know. I think we just got off to ‘ a bad start with my tongue stud.’ ‘I can’t imagine why. I thought it was absolutely gorgeous.’ Meg poked out her now plain tongue. Ambrose had taken one look at the silver stud the day before and grimaced. ‘Isn’t that remarkable. Now, take it out, please, before you scare our customers and put them off their food.’ ‘I don’t mind really,’ Meg whispered. ‘I told him I’m happy to look just as ordinary as you while I’m working here.’

Ordinary? Every hackle on Eva’s body rose again before she mentally pushed them all down. She looked at her reflection in the glass door opposite. Long straight black hair tied back in a plait. White shirt. Simple silver jewellery. Average height. Average build-well, definitely not thin, anyway. All right, she was hardly Claudia Schiffer, but ordinary?

The child is only nineteen, she reminded herself. Twelve years younger than you. She knows not what she says. She bit back what she wanted to say: ‘I’ll have you know, when I was your age, etcetera, etcetera. Do you realise I was wearing earrings and eye makeup before you could even walk, etcetera, etcetera.’

The shop telephone started to ring. ‘That’s Dermot for you, Evie,’ Ambrose called out from the storeroom.

Eva walked over and picked up the phone behind the counter. ‘Hi, Dermot.’ There was no answer, just a lot of noise in the background, as though her boyfriend were in a bar. The property company he worked for was just off Grafton Street, surrounded by pubs, so perhaps that was exactly where he was.

‘Hello? Hello?’

Still no answer, though she just could hear Dermot talking to someone. He seemed to be explaining the features of his new mobile phone. What was it with Dermot and mobiles? she wondered as she waited, not very happily, for him to put the phone back to his ear and actually talk to her. She

hated mobiles herself, refused to get one, but Dermot was obsessed with them. His latest party trick was guessing what brand a mobile phone was from the ring it made. He’d made a spectacle of himself in a restaurant two weeks previously. ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me,’ he’d shouted across to the table beside them, as one of the diners reached for a phone playing a butchered version of ‘O Sole Mio.’ ‘It’s a Nokia, is it? No? Then definitely a Motorola. Yes!’ He’d actually punched the air in victory when the diner had shown him that, yes, it was a Motorola. He finally came on the line. ‘Eva? Are you there?’ ‘Well, yes, I thought one of us should be.’ ‘Sorry, babe.’ She winced inwardly. She wished he wouldn’t call her babe. ‘How are things?’ ‘Grand, grand. Except something urgent’s come up at work and I need to see you tonight and talk about it. Can you come and meet me here at Archibald’s?’ It was a new wine bar off St Stephen’s Green. ‘Tonight? Now?’ ‘Hold on a moment.’ She turned to her uncle. ‘Ambrose, do you mind if ‘ Ambrose interrupted. ‘Off you go, Evie. It’s nearly six anyway. Meg and I will close up shop here.’ She spoke into the phone again. ‘That’s grand, Dermot. See you soon.’

Moments later, she was walking down Camden Street. Pulling her coat in close against the sharp wind, she passed shops she knew like the back of her hand. The tailor, the charity shops, the hardware store, the photo gallery, the pottery shop. The old dark pubs were being joined by bright new bars these days, people spilling in and out of each of them, the air filling with the scent of tobacco and alcohol as she passed doorways, the noise from inside mingling with the traffic sounds.

She liked walking through the Dublin streets. In the early days she’d driven her battered old car to and from work each day. When she’d worked part time, it hadn’t been so bad. But when she’d gone fulltime, she’d realised it was quicker to walk from one side of Dublin to the other than sit stranded each morning and evening in a traffic jam along the quays, looking down into the murky water of the Liffey.

Eva waited at the pedestrian lights, wondering again what the urgent work business was that Dermot had mentioned. And why he needed to talk to her about it. She smiled at the irony. Here she was dropping everything to talk to Dermot about his work and she hadn’t told him about Ambrose’s offer yet. She hadn’t told anybody. Not her parents. Not her sister. Not even Lainey.

It was still early days with Dermot, though, she told herself. They weren’t at the stage where they confided fully in each other, after all.

Which stage is that? The stage where you like each other? a voice piped up inside her head.

We like each other, she insisted.

Do you?

Did she? She thought about it as she walked on. The awful thing was she really wasn’t too sure any more. She’d slowly been realising they didn’t have anything in common. They didn’t read the same books or like the same films. They didn’t even laugh at the same things.

Perhaps she was just out of practice. Perhaps this was what relationships were like these days. After all, Dermot had broken something of a boyfriend drought. A long drought, in fact. In the past ten years she had gone out with only two other men, neither of whom lasted longer than two months - her decision both times. She was probably expecting too much. There were bound to be some things about Dermot that annoyed her.

Some things? Everything, more like it.

They’d met when he started calling into the shop nearly four months previously. She’d noticed him immediately, with his smart suit, groomed hair, quick movements. Like a glossy bird, Eva had thought. Preened and sure of himself. With great charm, he’d insisted she - not Ambrose - served him, each time he came in. Then, one Friday evening, he’d asked her out for a drink. Very flattered, she’d accepted. Then dinner. Even more flattered, she’d accepted again.

And again. They had fallen into a routine almost without her realising it.

They usually saw each other during the week. He was too busy showing properties to clients at weekends, he’d explained. They’d meet for dinner, a drink or a film. They’d kissed, but not a lot. Dermot always called a halt to that side of things too. ‘Let’s get to know each other first,’ he’d always said. Eva hadn’t known whether to be impressed at his self restraint or disappointed at the lack of passion between them.

This holiday to New York had been his idea. His cousin had an apartment they’d be able to stay in. ‘A bedroom each,’ he’d said quickly, ‘plenty of room for us both.’

‘New York? Really? That would be brilliant.’ She’d never been to New York. She’d always wanted to go there.

‘You see, I’ve a little proposition I want to put to you while we’re away.’ He’d given her a meaningful look.

Eva’s stomach had flipped in quite an unpleasant way. ‘Proposition?’ she’d repeated, not liking how close the word was to ‘proposal’. She’d pressed him for details but he wouldn’t elaborate. ‘No, this is something to discuss when we’re in a nice New York restaurant with a good bottle of wine in front of us, all relaxed.’