It's All About Him (34 page)

'Okay, okay, I'll hire a cook,' Dee cried, holding up her hands in submission.

'You're not listening.' Lisa shook her head impatiently. 'You have to think about what it is you enjoy doing and incorporate that into your plans.'

'I enjoy cooking,' Dee told her, 'alone.'

Lisa gave her a look and took a moment to consume some more wine. 'How did the show go today?' she asked eventually.

'Fine.'

'What were you talking about?'

Immediately, Dee came to life. 'Homemade products versus processed products. We had the buyer from ValueMart supermarkets on and he was saying that customers are a lot more discerning these days and there's huge demand for specialized products.'

Lisa's eyes narrowed, her misery forgotten. 'Like what?'

Dee shrugged. 'Jams, pâté, breads, that sort of thing.'

Lisa burst out laughing.

'What?' Dee smiled. She was delighted to see her friend laughing again even if she had no idea why.

Lisa sighed. 'I love you dearly, Dee, but sometimes you can be incredibly thick.'

'Thanks very much!'

'Well, I'm sorry, but you can.'

'Lisa, I have no idea what you are on about.'

'Right, you like cooking alone, yes?'

Dee nodded.

'So you could produce your own range of foods. You already have recipes for chutneys and jams, breads and cakes, it's just a matter of packaging and marketing them.'

Dee stared at her. 'I'm assuming that it's the shock of being dumped that has unhinged you, hopefully temporarily.'

'No, listen, Dee,' Lisa said, her eyes alight with excitement. 'This could really work. You have the talent and now you have the contacts and the celebrity status. People would queue up to buy your produce and because of your connection with the
Right Now
nutrition spot, the supermarkets will be begging to stock it.'

Dee shook her head. 'Even if you were right it would take a huge investment to set it up; I would need to come up with a brand name, a logo, someone would have to design and make the packaging and then there's the small matter of production. I would need a commercial kitchen to produce food on that kind of scale and half a dozen chefs to help me and then there's the distribution – it's impossible.'

'Nothing is impossible. We'd need help on all of the design stuff and administration, admittedly, but I have an answer to the production problem.'

'Go on.'

'You could hire some people like that woman you interviewed, the one who moved down from Donegal to be near her daughter.'

'Vera.'

'And that other girl, Kitty, she has young children, doesn't she?'

'Yes, but where exactly would I put them, Lisa?' Dee said impatiently.

'That's just it, you wouldn't have to put them anywhere. They could work from home.' Lisa smiled triumphantly. 'You give them your recipes, supply them with the ingredients, tell them what quantities you want and voilà!'

'But what about the cost of their electricity and equipment and all that sort of thing?'

Lisa waved a hand expansively. 'You could incorporate all those costs into their salaries.'

Dee looked at her. She seemed to have an answer for everything. 'I don't know, Lisa, it's an enormous undertaking.'

'It would be a lot of work setting it up,' Lisa acknowledged, 'but once you were up and running it would be straightforward enough.'

'It's an interesting idea,' Dee agreed slowly, 'but I'd need a loan to get it off the ground and who's going to give me one?' She thought back to the last meeting with her bank manager and realized he'd laugh in her face if she came looking for money.

'Banks will be beating a path to your door to give you money, Dee, you're hot property now.'

Dee shook her head, smiling. 'Lisa, I've appeared on television three times for a matter of minutes, I'm hardly a celebrity.'

Lisa leaned forward and looked at her, her expression serious. 'You have made waves, Dee, with your stance on this whole labelling issue and Joe Public trusts you and listens to you. Why do you think these journalists keep phoning you for your opinions?'

It was true that hardly a day went by now without some member of the press calling for her views on some issue or other. Dee felt a flicker of excitement stir deep within her. 'I suppose it wouldn't cost me anything to look into it a bit more.'

Lisa grinned triumphantly. 'It wouldn't cost at all! And now that I'm a single woman again I can devote all my lonely evenings to helping you.'

Dee watched as the tears welled up again in Lisa's eyes.

'Oh, Dee,' she wailed, 'what am I going to do?'

Dee rocked her gently as she cried. 'You're going to make Happy Days the best crèche in North Dublin, remember?'

Lisa sniffed and nodded into Dee's shoulder.

'And when you're not busy with that,' Dee continued, 'you're going to help me set up my new business.'

Peggy had finished cleaning the bathroom and was about to go back downstairs to make a sandwich for lunch when she had second thoughts. Neil was out and she hadn't been inside his bedroom in over a week; the floor must need hoovering and she should probably change his sheets. She didn't like to invade his privacy but if he couldn't be bothered to do his laundry, she reasoned, someone had to do it. She stripped the bed, tossed the dirty laundry down into the hall and then threw open his bedroom window to let some air in before going in search of clean sheets.

As she made up the bed, her eyes darted occasionally from the papers on his bedside table to the open suitcase in the corner. Would it be so terrible if she had a little rummage? All she wanted was some evidence that he was telling her the truth. Some little nugget that she could take to Dee to prove to her that Neil was trustworthy.Of course, if he would only talk to her she wouldn't dream of stooping to such behaviour but no matter how much she begged and pleaded, he told her nothing. In fact, he'd told Dee more than he'd told her.

Peggy's eyes filled up and she quickly wiped them on her sleeve. Neil had never confided in her before, why would he start now? Even when he was Sam's age he'd been a secretive little monkey and it would have concerned her more if he hadn't been so good-humoured and outgoing. She wondered now, though, if that character trait had had any bearing on his addiction and if there was something she could have done to change it. Maybe if his father hadn't died of a brain haemorrhage when he was only fourteen he wouldn't have strayed from the straight and narrow. Certainly, Mick would have stopped him going off around the world. But it was the very fact that she had lost her husband when they were still relatively young that had made Peggy realize she had to let her son go. Life was too short and she wanted him to experience it to the full. She loved getting the postcards every month – although she knew it was Dee who sent them – from exotic places and she was happy that he was doing it with such a lovely girl. She'd been proud of the way Neil had taken Dee under his wing. The young girl had been so shy and reserved when he had first brought her home but had positively blossomed as the relationship deepened. Peggy had had her doubts about Dee giving up her college place to go travelling and she had understood why Pauline was concerned that Dee was squandering her inheritance, but she had never doubted that Neil loved the girl or that he would take good care of her.

Peggy slumped down on to the freshly made bed, letting the tears run unheeded down her cheeks. She had felt physical pain when she found out what had happened out in Greece and though he was her son and she loved him, she found it hard to come to terms with what Neil had done. It didn't help that he had always refused to discuss it with her.

'I've made my peace with Dee, Mum, and recompensed her and that's all that should concern you,' he'd told her, several times, but it wasn't enough for Peggy. She wanted him to tell her what had made him do such a terrible thing; what it was that had turned him from being a confident and happy young man into a deceitful, pathetic excuse for a man. She wanted him to talk to her about the gambling and to rely on her for support if he needed it. Again, he dismissed her entreaties, saying that it was all in the past and she shouldn't worry about it. But she did.

The first Peggy knew about the whole incident in Greece was when Pauline Fogarty, Dee's aunt, had made a brief but extremely angry phone call the night after Dee got home. It wasn't until after Sam was born that Dee gave her the full history of Neil's downward spiral into addiction. It had been hard to hear but after the long silence, Peggy had welcomed the information, feeling now she could at least help if ever Neil wanted her to.

He had called briefly soon after the break-up and had merely told her that things hadn't worked out and that he was continuing his travels alone. When she'd questioned him about what Pauline had told her, he'd hung up.

When Peggy first found out about her son's behaviour she went through a variety of emotions. The first, predictably, had been denial, but as the days passed and Dee refused to talk to her, she began to realize it must be true. Then had come anger; how could her son have done such a thing? She had brought him up better than that! She hadn't had much to give him when it came to material things but she prided herself that she had given him her moral code and she was horrified and furious that he could turn out so badly. Then had come guilt; what had she done or, indeed, not done, that had resulted in him turning out this way? And why, if he was really dealing with an addiction and all that that entailed, had he not felt he could turn to her?

It was then that she'd phoned first the Samaritans and then Gamblers Anonymous. The people she had talked to in both organizations had been kind, informative and had given her the same advice; wait. Her son had a disease and it was impossible to help him until he was ready to be helped.

'I don't even know where he is!' she'd wailed.

'He'll probably come home when he reaches rock bottom,' she was told. 'You just need to be there for him when he does.'

After that, Peggy had borrowed books on the subject from the library, determined that when Neil eventually came back to her she would be fully equipped to help him but instead of the broken shell of a man that she'd been expecting, a prosperous and confident one had walked through her door, one who very politely informed her that he didn't need her help, it was 'sorted'.

That was what unnerved her most and stopped her from begging Dee to give him a chance. She would never say it aloud, but she wasn't quite sure she trusted Neil.

Wiping her eyes, Peggy stood up to go – it wouldn't do for him to find her in here – when her eyes came to rest on the papers by the bed. They were probably just bills, he certainly wasn't going to leave anything important lying around; he was almost obsessively secretive. She bent and strained to read the small print; her glasses were downstairs but she was afraid to go and fetch them in case Neil returned. Neither did she want to pick up the documents in case she put them back in the wrong order and he noticed. Since when, she thought tiredly, had she become so afraid of her own son?

The top document was, as she'd suspected, a bill. It was for seven hundred and eighty euros from a garage near the airport. She frowned. It seemed like too new a car to need a service and if anything had gone wrong with it, surely it would have been taken care of tinder warranty? She would think about that later when she had more time. She moved it slightly to one side so she could see the page underneath. The words made no sense to her, presumably it was Spanish. There was only one page left and it was slightly crumpled and, her pulse quickened, it was handwritten. The writing was small and untidy – definitely not Neil's – and Peggy struggled to make out the words, not even sure if they were actually in English.

She froze as she heard Neil's key in the door and jumping to her feet, she quickly smoothed down the bedspread and fixed the pages back the way she'd found them. She was standing in the doorway, trying to look composed when he reached the top of the stairs.

'What were you doing in my room?' he asked, frowning.

'And hello to you too,' she laughed.

'Mother?'

When had he stopped calling her Mam, she wondered? 'I was changing your sheets.'

He shot her a suspicious look and then brushed past her to go into the room.

'You're welcome,' she muttered, heading for the stairs.

'Sorry, Mam, thanks.'

She turned back to see him standing in the doorway looking slightly shamefaced.

She smiled. 'You're welcome. Neil—'

'Sorry, Mother, can't talk now, I have to make a call.'

'Sure, no problem.' She went downstairs and started to make some ham sandwiches for their lunch.

Every time she tried to get close, tried to talk to him, he just backed off, she thought, feeling frustrated. Sometimes, he had paperwork to do or he had a meeting to go to, or like now, he had an important call to make. Peggy sincerely hoped he was as busy as he made out and it was business and not gambling that was preoccupying him. She wondered if she would get another opportunity to look at that letter; if only she had read it first maybe she would have had time to make sense of it before he had interrupted her. And then there was the mystery of the bill from the car dealership; what on earth could it be for?

She wished she had someone she could ask; she cut the sandwiches with a little more force than was strictly necessary. She felt so alone and isolated; the only person she could really turn to was Dee and she couldn't do that; it would be the ultimate betrayal. There was her family and Mick's, all of whom were close but, despite that, she'd never told them about Neil's gambling problem. She told herself it was because she wanted to protect him but she knew that it was really because she felt embarrassed and ashamed. She understood it was an illness but she doubted that other people would believe that and so she bore her burden alone.

When Neil had come back she had called Gamblers Anonymous again and asked the lovely man who answered if she could believe what her son was telling her.