Minding Frankie (13 page)

She learned about him during their coffee breaks. He said the classes and his AA meetings were his only social outings of the week.

He was a placid person and didn’t ask many questions about Lisa’s life. Because of this, she told him that her parents had always seemed to dislike each other greatly and that she couldn’t understand why they stayed together.

“Probably for fear of finding a worse life,” Noel said glumly, and Lisa agreed that this might well be true.

He asked her once did she have a fellow and she had replied truthfully that she loved someone but it was a bit problematical. He didn’t want to be tied down so she didn’t really know where she was.

“I expect it will sort itself out,” Noel said, and somehow that was fairly comforting.

And Noel was right, in a way. It sort of sorted itself out.

Lisa never called around to Anton without letting him know she was on her way. She took an interest in all he was doing and made no more remarks about April’s involvement in anything. Instead, she concentrated on making the cleverest and most eye-catching invitations to the pre-launch party.

There was no question of her getting anything new to wear. There wasn’t any money to pay for an outfit. She confided this to Noel.

“Does it matter all that much?” he asked.

“It does a bit because if I thought I looked well I’d behave well, and I know this sounds silly, but a lot of the people who will be there sort of judge you by what you wear.”

“They must be mad,” Noel said. “How could they not take notice of you? You look amazing, with your height and your looks—that hair …”

Lisa looked at him sharply, but he was clearly speaking sincerely, not just trying to flatter her. “Some of them are mad, I’m sure, but I’m being very honest with you. It’s a real pain that I can’t get anything new.”

“I don’t like to suggest this but what about a thrift shop? My cousin sometimes works in one. She says she often gets designer clothes in there.”

“Lead me to it,” Lisa said with a faint feeling of hope.

Molly Carroll had the perfect dress for her. It was scarlet with a blue ribbon threaded around the hem. The colors of Anton’s restaurant and the logo she had designed.

Molly said the dress could have been designed just for her. “I’m not very up-to-date in fashion,” she said, “but you’ll certainly stop them in their tracks in this one.”

Lisa smiled with pleasure. It
did
look good.

Katie treated her to a wash and blow-dry and she set out for the party in high good spirits. April was there in a very official capacity, welcoming people in.

“Great dress,” April said to Lisa.

“Thanks,” Lisa said. “It’s vintage,” and went to find Anton.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” he said when he caught sight of her.

“It’s
your
night. How’s it going?” Lisa asked.

“Well, I’ve been working for two days on all these canapés but you wouldn’t think it was my night. April believes it’s hers. She’s insisting on being in every picture.” Just then a photographer approached them.

“And who’s this?” he asked, nodding at Lisa.

“My brilliant designer and stylist, Lisa Kelly,” responded Anton instantly.

The photographer wrote it down, and out of the corner of her eye Lisa could see April’s disapproval. She smiled all the more broadly.

“You’re really gorgeous, you know.” Anton was admiring Lisa openly. “And you wore my colors too.”

She savored the praise. She knew there would be times when she would play this scene over and over again in her mind. But she mustn’t dwell on herself and her dress.

Lisa blessed Noel and his cousin Emily’s thrift shop. She had paid so little for this outfit and she was one of the most elegant women in the room. More photographers were approaching her. She must try to look as though she wanted to deflect attention from herself.

“There’s a great crowd here,” Lisa said. “Did all the people you wanted turn up?” Across the room she saw that April had a face like a sour lemon. “But I mustn’t monopolize you,” she added as she slipped away, knowing that he was looking after her as she went to mingle with the other guests.

Miranda was slightly drunk.

“I think it’s game, set and match to you, Lisa,” she said unsteadily.

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked innocently.

“Oh, I think you’ve knocked April into Also-Ran.…”

“What?”

“It’s a saying, you know, in a horse race. There’s the winner and there’s Also-Ran, meaning the ones that didn’t win.”

“I know what it
means,
” Lisa said, “but what do
you
mean?”

“I think you have the single, undivided attention of Anton Moran,” Miranda said. It was a complicated phrase to finish and she sat down after the effort.

Lisa smiled. What should she do now? Try to outstay April or leave early? Hard though it was to do, she decided to leave early.

His disappointment was honey to her soul.

“You’re never going? I thought you were going to sit down with me afterwards and have a real postmortem.”

“Nonsense! You’ll have lots of people. April, for example.”

“Oh, God, no. Lisa, rescue me. She’ll be talking of column inches of coverage and her biological clock.”

Lisa laughed aloud. “No, Anton, of course she won’t. See you soon. Call me and tell me how it all went.” And she was gone.

There was a bus at the end of the lane and she ran to catch it. It was full of tired people going home late from work. She felt like a glorious butterfly in her smart dress and high heels, while they all looked drab and colorless. She had drunk two cocktails, the man she loved had told her that she was gorgeous and wanted her to stay.

It was only nine o’clock at night. She was a lucky, lucky girl. She must never forget this.

For Stella Dixon the time just flew by: there was so much to see to every day. There was a lawyer to talk to, a nurse from the health authorities, another nurse—this time from the operating theater—who tried to explain the procedure (though Stella was having none of it; she was far too busy, she said). Once she got her anesthetic “that would be curtains” for her. While she was still here she had to try to deal with everything.

Her doctor, Declan Carroll, came in to see her regularly. She asked after his wife.

“Maybe the babies will get to know each other,” Stella had said wistfully one day.

“Maybe. We’ll have to work on it.” He was a very pleasant young man.

“You mean
you
will have to work on it,” she said with a smile that broke his heart.

For Noel there weren’t enough hours in the day either. Anytime that he was not slaving in Hall’s, going to twelve-step meetings or catching up on his studies, he spent surfing the net for advice on how to cope with a new baby. He had moved into his new place in Chestnut Court and was busy making preparations for her arrival.

He had AA meetings every day, since the thought that most
things could be sorted out by several pints and three whiskeys was always with him. He managed to stay away from the bar at his father’s retirement party. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place as they presented a watch to Charlie that he said he would wear every day.

Noel began to wonder how he had ever found time to drink.

“Maybe I’m nearly over it,” he said hopefully to Malachy, whom he had met on his first visit and who was now his sponsor at AA.

“I don’t want to be downbeat, but we all feel this in the early days,” Malachy warned him.

“It’s not really early days. I haven’t had a drink for twenty-one days,” Noel said proudly.

“Fair play to you, but I am four years dry and yet if something went seriously wrong in my life I know only too well where I would
want
to find a solution. It would solve everything for a couple of hours and then I’d have to start all over again … as hard as the first time, only worse.…”

For Brian Flynn the days flew by as well. He adapted perfectly to his new living quarters and began to think that he had always lived over a busy hair salon. Garry cut his hair for him and tamed the red-gray thatch into a reasonable shape. They said he was better than any security firm and that the fact that he lived there was a deterrent to intruders.

He left each morning for the immigrant center where he worked; as he passed through the salon he encountered many ladies in varying degrees of disarray and marveled to himself how they endured so much in the cause of beauty. He would greet them pleasantly, and Katie always introduced him as the Reverend Lodger Upstairs.

“You could hear confessions here, Brian, but I think you’d be electrified by what they’d tell you,” Katie said cheerfully.

She had discovered that even in the middle of a recession, women were more anxious than ever to have their hair done. It kept them sane, somehow, and feeling in control.

·   ·   ·

For Lisa Kelly the time crawled by.

She was finding it difficult to get decisions made about her designs for Anton’s restaurant, as a decision meant money being spent. Although the restaurant was open and full to bursting every night, there was still no verdict on whether to use her new logos and style on the tableware. Instead, she was concentrating on her course-work and giving Noel a hand.

Noel had undergone some amazing conversion; when Lisa heard about his plan to take on a baby, she thought it was a fantasy. She had felt sure he would never be able to cope with a job, a college course and a newborn: it was too much to ask from one person, especially someone who was weak and shy like Noel. However, she was beginning to change her mind.

Noel had surprised her, and in a way she almost envied him. He was so dedicated to all that he was doing. Everything was new for him. He had a whole new life ahead, while Lisa felt that it was forever more of the same. Of course it was all still theoretical; the baby wasn’t even born yet. But he was preparing as much as he could to be a father. His notes always had lists scribbled in the margins:
nappy-rash cream, baby wipes
, they would say.
Four bottles, bottle brush, nipples, steriliser …

Her parents were still living in their icy, uncaring way, sharing a roof but not a bedroom, not a dining table, not any leisure time. They had no interest in Lisa or her life, any more than they cared how Katie fared with Garry in the salon. It was just casual indifference, not amazing hostility, that existed between them as a couple. One had only to come into a room for the other to leave it.

Lisa had never been able to pin Anton down: there was always
this
conference and
that
sales meeting and
this
television appearance and
that
radio interview. She had never seen him alone. The pictures of her and Anton together had given way to shots of him with any number of beautiful girls; though she would have heard if he had any new real girlfriend. It would have been in the Sunday papers.
That was the way Anton attracted publicity—he gave free drinks to columnists and photographers and they always snapped him with several beautiful women and gave the impression that he was busy making up his mind among them all.

And it wasn’t as if he had abandoned her or was ignoring her, Lisa reminded herself. A day didn’t pass without a text message from Anton. Life was so busy, he would text. They had a rock band in last night, they were going to do a society wedding, a charity auction, a new tasting menu, a week of Breton specialties. Nowhere any mention of Lisa or her designs and plans.

Then, just as she was about to face the fact that he had left her, he wrote about this simply beautiful restaurant he had heard of in Honfleur, where the seafood was to die for. They
must
sneak away there for a weekend of self-indulgence soon. No date was fixed—just the word “soon,” and when she was starting to think that it meant “never,” he said that there was a trade fair next month in Paris that they could both go to and fish for ideas and
then
run off to Honfleur. They might even dream up a whole Normandy season for the restaurant while they were there.

It was an unsettling life, to say the least.

Lisa couldn’t seem to get on with other work. She kept changing or improving the proposals she had done for Anton—ideas that had never been discussed or even acknowledged.

She was doing all right at school. Nothing like Noel, of course.
That
man was like something possessed. He said that he made do with four and a half hours’ sleep. He laughed it off, saying that he would probably get less when the new baby arrived. He was so calm and accepting about it all.

“Did you love her, this Stella?” Lisa had asked.

“I think ‘love’ is too strong a word. I like her a lot,” he replied, struggling to be honest.

“She must love you, then, to leave you in charge,” Lisa said.

“No, I don’t think she does. I think she trusts me. That’s all.”

“Well, that’s a big part of life. If you trust someone, you’re halfway there,” Lisa said.

“Do you trust this Anton you talk about?”

“Not really,” Lisa said, with a face that closed the door on any further conversation about the topic.