Once in a Lifetime (17 page)

Donald and Marcella went way back. Many moons ago, they’d had a fling on a press trip to Brussels and, for whatever glorious reason, there had never been any awkwardness between them since. They’d both been between relationships at the time, and the following morning they’d lain in Donald’s giant bed in the hotel and enjoyed talking to each other just as much as they’d enjoyed making rather tipsy love the night before.

It would never have worked for them to be together properly, Marcella was sure of that. Donald was more married to his job than he could ever be to any woman. Committed journalists were a nightmare: always obsessed with stories, never able to let go of the job. But they’d remained friends and, sometimes, they tipped each other off on news the other should know.

‘I’m in the dog box,’ Donald said. ‘Talk.’

‘OK, I hate asking this, but I have a wayward councillor who’s in a bit of bother… ‘

‘Mickey Roche,’ he said before she’d even finished. ‘The chief sub-editor fancies “Taking the Mickey”.’ The Courier Mail was a broadsheet so would never print such a headline, but the office’s unofficial bookie, a sports writer named Chuck, ran a highly profitable book on possible headlines for stories in the tabloids. ‘My money’s on “Mickey’s Mouse”.’

‘You’ve got a picture,’ Marcella groaned. Only with photographic evidence could such a headline be imaginable. How else would they report that Mickey’s mickey was mouse-sized?

Donald laughed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there are any pics, but you can’t be sure. We haven’t got them, anyhow.

How are you going to play this?’ he asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Marcella replied. ‘Not a lot of damage limitation available for a toked-up councillor strutting his naked stuff on a Bahamian hotel balcony.’

This time, Donald laughed so much he snorted. ‘You should be in the office book for headlines,’ he said. ‘You have a flair for it. We’ll be going soft on Mickey, no puns intended. There’s bound to be a reaction in Leinster House, so we’ll use that rather than speculate.’ Leinster House was the Irish parliamentary chamber and while Mickey, as a local county councillor, wasn’t based there, his party would come in for a few slingshots over their wayward party member. ‘Are you around this week for a drink?’

Marcella ran through her diary in her head. ‘Should be,’

she said. ‘Friday maybe? I’ll phone you tomorrow.’

‘Great. Now, you’ve got the inside track with Ingrid Fitzgerald and David Kenny,’ he went on. ‘Any truth to the rumour that there are cash-flow problems with Kenny’s department store and that DeVere’s are going to buy them out in a fire sale?’

For a moment, Marcella’s legendary cool deserted her. A

fire sale only occurred when financial problems meant everything had to go. ‘What?’ she said.

‘I’ll take that as a “no” then,’ Donald replied. ‘Just a very small rumour, Ingrid. I heard it last week and there’s been nothing else, so I wondered if there was any truth in it. We don’t have the staff or the money to run on every tip-off.’

‘I hadn’t heard any such thing,’ Marcella said firmly, recovering.

She cared about Donald, but Ingrid and David were among her closest friends. Her protective instinct went into overdrive. ‘It’s unlikely, very unlikely,’ she added. ‘David’s a very canny businessman and, from what I hear, things are doing brilliantly.’

‘Right.’ Donald was thoughtful. ‘Sour grapes from DeVere’s perhaps?’

‘Could be. Stranger things have happened,’ Marcella said lightly. ‘I’ll call you back about Friday. Thanks, Donald.’

She got off the phone, the fate of Mickey Roche completely gone from her mind. She needed to talk to David soon.

Seven

What doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger. I just hope you don’t have to go through that process in the firstplace. But if you do, its true. Trust me.

Two days later, David walked through the front entrance of Kenny’s department store. He often went to the office that way, pushing open the big brown-and-gold swinging doors, the way the customers did, instead of slipping in through the back entrance that led into the offices. It was a way of connecting with the store, reminding him of what he did.

Even early on a Wednesday morning, the store was buzzing.

The cosmetics hall was a flurry of activity, with scent wafting in the air and the hum of people chatting. The music in the store was always discreetly low, Vivaldi today. David hated piped pop, and insisted on proper, classical music. Occasionally even opera came from the speakers. He walked through cosmetics and into jewellery, which was quiet. The jewellery hall was elegant, with exquisite costume jewellery displayed alongside a limited amount of the real stuff. He had recently taken the work of a new designer, a young man from Poland, who was extremely good. David looked in one of the cabinets at Pavel Zaborsky’s work, noting with approval how

well it looked. Modern, rounded pieces, cufflinks and rings, with round cabochon semiprecious jewels in each. It wasn’t expensive, but it looked incredibly expensive, that was the trick. David had been hooked immediately. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Ingrid liked. She was the epitome of the modern woman, and yet her taste in jewellery ran to Art Deco pieces, marcasite brooches and delicate little watches and earrings that looked like they might fall off the hand of some etiolated Viennese countess from the twenties. No, Ingrid wouldn’t like Pavel’s jewellery, but there were plenty who did.

His daughter, Molly, had told him that her flatmate Natalie had nearly finished her first collection.

He liked Natalie, admired her fierce dedication to her work and how she was prepared to work hard in the store’s cafe, never expecting anything from being best friends with the owner’s daughter. But then, David thought with pride, Molly wouldn’t actually be friends with anyone who thought like that. Even at school, she’d hated the clique of what she called ‘the children of. These were teenagers with famous, wealthy parents who somehow believed that because Mummy or Daddy worked in big business or appeared on the telly it made them special by association. As Molly used to say: ‘Not!’

Ethan had been different. David sighed. Ethan was showing no glimmer of interest in either the family business or getting a job. Ingrid pandered to him and had worried incessantly about him flying off to Thailand. When David had been his son’s age, he’d been working in the store: morning till night, doing all the horrible jobs so he wouldn’t get too big for his boots, as his father used to say.

‘Good morning, Mr Kenny,’ said the assistant behind the jewellery counter.

‘Good morning, Laura,’ he said instantly. ‘Peaceful in here so far?’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said, ‘but you know early mornings aren’t good jewellery times. It’ll pick up a bit later.’

‘I know, of course,’ he said, and smiled.

She’d been a little anxious when she talked to him, but only slightly. David never ruled by fear, a lesson he’d learned from his father. ‘Kenny’s is a family business and family businesses do better when the sense of family values stretches to the management as well,’ Andrew Kenny had said.

That notion had been vital in the old days, when he’d started the business. In 1924, nobody would have thought that a department store would work outside a big city, and now look at it.

David walked out of jewellery, thinking again about Molly’s friend, Natalie.

‘She’s got a lovely collection,’ Dad,’ Molly had said. ‘I can’t describe it, but it’s all brave and strong.’

‘Get her to show it to me,’ he’d said.

‘Well…’ Molly paused. ‘It’s tricky.’

‘Why?’

‘Natalie’s very independent. She’s got a thing about doing this the right way, going through Paul.’ Paul ran jewellery.

‘She doesn’t want to use you or the fact that she knows me to get her foot in the door.’

David considered this. ‘That’s either very commendable or very stupid. I don’t know which.’

‘Natalie’s anything but stupid,’ Molly pointed out. ‘If so many jewellers hadn’t gone out of business over the past year, she’d have got a job with one of them and a platform for her stuff. She’s done brilliantly setting herself up, and she wants to do it all properly. She’s like me, she hates all that “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” cronyism,’ Molly almost spat.

‘I just said she could show it to me,’ David pointed out mildly. ‘I didn’t say I’d buy it from her just because she’s your friend. Business is business. Another old cliche.’ He grinned.

Directly in front of him, the vast wooden staircase stretched upwards, gleaming goddesses in the Old Celtic style at the front of each banister, like the figureheads of ships.

One was Morrigan, the warrior goddess, carved from oak with a jutting chin, trailing hair and a sword held firmly in one strong hand. The other hand held a shield decorated with the goddess’s symbol, a crow. The second goddess was Brighid, healer and keeper of the druidic fire. Her gown was carved with flames, and in her calmly crossed hands she carried one of the woven crosses that bore her name.

In David’s father’s time, the goddesses had been Egyptian, painted gold, black and azure. A trip down the Nile in the 1930s had entranced Andrew Kenny, and he’d spent a lifetime reading about Egypt and taking holidays there, staying in the Old Cataract Hotel and photographing the temples.

But when his father’s beloved Egyptian women had begun to chip and fall apart, David decided to commission these ancient Irish goddesses, in memory of a time when he’d loved a woman who knew all about the old Celtic religion.

Ingrid, who had no interest in magical imagery, had never even noticed the symbolism of these statues. He’d never told her about Star, either. Women found it hard to reconcile themselves to other great loves in a man’s life: something else his father had told him.

David ignored the stairs in favour of the escalator, but as he rose above the floors, the usual glow of pride wasn’t there.

It was just as well his father couldn’t see what was happening, David thought, no longer seduced by the beauty of the department store he’d worked for all his life. If his father hadn’t been dead already, it would have killed him.

Just after half twelve, in her small office on the fifth floor of Kenny’s, Stacey O’Shaughnessy felt a cool breeze coming from somewhere. Instinctively, she turned around to see if David had opened the window in her office while she’d been down on the second floor getting coffee, but it was shut. More draughts then, that had to be it. Despite all the money that had been pumped into Kenny’s, it was still a very old building,

full of architectural oddities and quirks that modern, well insulated places didn’t have.

She set David’s cafe latte on the tray, added the half a spoon of sugar that he liked, and opened the cellophane on his sandwich.

Ham and salad on rye bread. Not that David would notice what he was eating, to be frank. Not these days. Stacey had worked for David Kenny for fifteen years and previously he’d always loved his food. When she used to bake for her children, she’d sometimes take some muffins or homemade scones into the office for elevenses and he loved them. Of course, Stacey’s children were grown up now and she didn’t bake that often, just cakes for birthdays and such. Except, she doubted whether David would want any, even if she’d arrived with some of his favourite soda bread scones and gooseberry jam. He’d changed, eating his lunchtime sandwich without appearing to taste anything.

She took a sip of her own cappuccino before carrying the tray over to his door and knocking.

‘David,’ she said in her clear voice. ‘Lunch.’

There was no answer. He wasn’t there, must have slipped out when she was in the cafe.

Balancing the tray in one hand, Stacey opened the door.

David Kenny was there, sitting in his seat and facing the open window. That’s the source of the breeze, Stacey thought briefly, before realising that her boss wasn’t looking, as he sometimes did, across the town spires to the curve of the coastline and the white-capped waves of the Irish Sea. His head hung down on his chest.

‘David!’ Stacey let the tray drop to the floor and rushed forward. But before she even touched him, she could tell it was too late. There was a grey tinge to his normally tanned face, a whitening around the lips and a slackness to his jaw.

David Kenny was dead.

On the second floor of the TV studios, Ingrid was doing one of the things she loved most: research. Every few weeks, she

conducted an in-depth interview with a public figure where she got to break the mould. Instead of a straight Q&A where the subject got to spout their views on specific headline making topics like crime or unemployment, Ingrid talked to them for hours about what had driven them into politics in the first place or what still motivated them.

She loved it because it allowed her to do what she was born to do: analyse people.

‘You’re a failed psychologist,’ the producer told her when he’d looked in and found Ingrid, dark-rimmed reading glasses on and a cup of cooling tea at her elbow, unconsciously smiling to herself as she made notes.

Ingrid peered at Carlos over the top of her glasses. ‘You mean because of this lot?’ She gestured to the pages spread over the desk: newspaper and magazine clippings, and articles printed off the internet. ‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘Does that make me a total nerd?’

He laughed. ‘If being one of the highest-paid broadcasters in the State means you’re a nerd, then yes, you’re a nerd.’

‘You ought to print new Tshirts for the show, then: Nerd Tonight or something,’ she said, smiling. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, but came in and sat down on the chair opposite her desk.

Producing could burn people out easily and Ingrid liked working with young producers because they brought an energy to the job. She herself was probably the oldest person working on the show, which was both marvellous and scary in equal measure.