Once in a Lifetime (3 page)

And so everyone who loved Dara had promised her that they wouldn’t be a part of little Natalie’s world, telling her how like her mother she was or recounting tales of the days before she was born. Though Star had only known Dara a few years - since that rainy day she’d found her lying in utter despair on the coast road - she was one of the few people who’d heard the heartbreaking story of Dara’s earlier life.

‘The past hurts,’ said Dara, determined to spare her beloved daughter the pain.

‘But knowing can bring about healing,’ Star replied. ‘You can transcend the misery: you have.’

But Dara was firm. For Star, who lived on instinct, staying out of Natalie’s life as she grew up had been one of the hardest vows she’d ever kept.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the double doors on to the street swinging shut.’ A blast of icy February air whirled in, along with a man in a long grey overcoat, the collar turned up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he walked at speed, as if there wasn’t enough time to do all he wanted in life.

From her position beside a display of jewelled clips and silk-flower hairclips, Star watched David Kenny pass though his department store. He didn’t survey his surroundings the way she imagined he normally did, those clever eyes noting every detail and marking it down in his memory if something needed to be changed. His eyes were focused on something else entirely, something inward. The closer he got, the more she could see the tension in his face. His hair was greying, salt and pepper around the temples. Distinguished, Star thought; that was the word for it. He reached the stationary escalator in the centre of the store and instead of climbing up, showing how fit he undoubtedly was, he jabbed a red button. The escalator hummed to life and he stood in perfect stillness as it bore him up to the next floor.

Star had heard that David Kenny, like his father before

him, made a practice of walking through his beloved store every day, making sure all was well. All might have been well in the store this morning, but watching him now, Star was certain that all was not well with David Kenny.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Only someone who knew him well could detect the strain on his carefully composed face. Once, she’d known David Kenny better than she’d known any other human being. Now, the closest she got to him was when she reached a hand out in her garden and touched his tree, a rowan that had grown tall and strong in the thirty-five years since she’d planted it. She hadn’t talked to him since then, though she was sure he was well aware that she was Bluestone Tapestries. Lena’s initial attempt to arrange an introduction had been gently brushed away, with Star explaining that she ‘didn’t do corporate stuff.

‘Oh, but David meets everyone,” Lena said.

‘Not me,’ Star replied, smiling to show that she was happier that way. And she was grateful that David appeared to accept this, for he had made no attempt to meet her.

It wasn’t that she was angry with David. No. It hadn’t ended that way at all. It just wasn’t meant to be for her and the passionate young poet who’d written verses to her beauty, and made love to her as if he’d found his life’s meaning when their bodies were together. No, she wasn’t angry with him.

Her life had worked out in its own way. Until now, she’d imagined David’s had too.

But seeing how tense he looked, she wasn’t so sure.

An old saying of her mother’s came to mind: ‘What’s meant for you will find you.’ Many people took that to mean good things, but Star was enough of a student of the universe to know that it could mean bad things too.

Whatever terrible sadness was touching David, Star hoped he was able to deal with it.

One

Be kind to other women. It really works - most of the time.

And even on the days when it doesn’t, it’ll make you feel better inside.

That night, Ingrid sat at the beautifully laid dinner table in a grand old house, with her husband David and eleven other elegantly dressed couples, and wished with all her heart that she wasn’t there. The scent of the freesias in the crystal bowl in the centre of the table fought valiantly with the women’s perfumes, which were predominantly musky with the odd note of sharp florals. Ingrid loved scent, but she hated the heavy, cloying perfumes so many women wore at night, as if they were using pheromones to attract a caveman rather than attending a civilised dinner party with their husbands.

She reached across the snowy white tablecloth and pulled the bowl closer to her, leaning forward to smell the pure, clean flowers. Instantly, she was transported to her terrace on a late spring day, where she would sit revelling in the seclusion as she read the morning papers. Pity she wasn’t there now. Stop, she told herself. The evening wasn’t going to grow magically shorter by wishing it was over.

The problem was that these people were David’s friends.

Odd how a couple could be married for thirty years and still have such disparate friends. They shared some, people they’d known all their married life, but their careers had brought them a collection of acquaintances from two completely different worlds.

Tonight was a night for David’s people, in particular their host, the owner of a large transport company, useful to Kenny’s.

Three other businessmen whom David knew were also present: wealthy men with glamorous wives; women with beautiful hair and nails and wearing diamonds of every possible cut.

Looking around the table, Ingrid decided that the dinner party was entirely made up of successful men and their wives.

There were no business women; Ingrid could spot them from fifty paces, for no matter how successful they were, they were never quite as polished as the wives of alpha men. Years interviewing the great and the good on Politics Tonight had taught her that it was rare for an alpha man to form a lasting relationship with a woman who had as much power as he did.

People were probably amazed that she and David had stuck together; most men would have been uncomfortable sharing the limelight with a woman who made her living grilling politicians on live TV. But then, David wasn’t most men. He was, Ingrid thought, smiling across the table at him, special.

He caught her eye and smiled back, and she thought how well he looked in his grey suit and pale pink shirt. She knew he was tired because of the lines around his eyes, but nobody else would pick up on that. They’d see the usual handsome, charming David Kenny, the man who’d inherited the family firm and taken it on to a whole new level. In the same way, nobody looking at Ingrid would see a woman with a mild headache who didn’t want to be here. They’d see what she wanted them to see: a woman who’d pulled out all the stops with hair and make-up, yet remained modest in the diamond department. Ingrid felt that knuckle-duster rings were like push-up bras: you either liked them or you didn’t.

The only interesting thing about nights out schmoozing David’s business acquaintances was that Ingrid ceased to be Ingrid Fitzgerald, the television personality who’d kept her maiden name from her days as a radio producer; she was Ingrid Kenny, David’s wife. And sometimes, just sometimes, that made her deliciously invisible. Like now.

The man seated on her left turned to talk to her.

‘You’re Mrs Kenny, aren’t you?’ he said. He was sixty something, balding, with a weathered complexion that spoke of many hours spent outdoors, probably on the sea, Ingrid decided. His outfit, a blue blazer with gold buttons, had a hint of ‘Commodore of the Yacht Club’ about it.

‘Yes,’ said Ingrid gently, sensing that he had no idea who she was professionally. ‘I’m Ingrid, David’s wife.’

‘Marvellous business,’ the Commodore said, grabbing his glass of red wine. ‘Kenny’s - what a store. I don’t suppose you have time to be involved yourself, do you? I know what you ladies are like; so many other things to do, charities, committees …’ He smiled at her benignly. ‘My wife, Elizabeth - that’s her over there in the red - she’s on four committees.

I don’t know where she finds the time.’

Elizabeth was a steely-eyed brunette, who was expertly made-up and wore an exotic beaded creation. She was watching Ingrid and her husband with interest. Ingrid reckoned that Elizabeth recognised her from the television and was just as sure that Elizabeth knew the poor old Commodore wouldn’t.

‘Well, I am involved in some charities,’ Ingrid said to her neighbour. She was a patron of an AIDS charity, on the board of a domestic abuse, and regularly hosted charity balls. ‘But I don’t have that much time, because I work too.’

‘Oh, really,’ said her neighbour airily, as if the notion of a woman working was highly eccentric and would never catch on. ‘And what is it you do?’

It was moments like these that Ingrid stored up to tell her

friend, Marcella, whenever Marcella claimed that everyone and their lawyer knew who Ingrid was.

‘You’ve such a recognisable face,’ Marcella insisted.

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Ingrid replied. ‘Famous is for film stars and singers, not people like me. People recognise me, they just don’t know where from. They think they must have seen me in the supermarket or something.’

The downside of her being on television a lot was going into Marks & Spencer’s and nipping up to the underwear department to find several people watching her with fascination as she searched among the briefs, trying to find a five pack of knickers that suited her.

Anyway, here was this sweet man who clearly had no idea who she was and it was quite nice, although difficult to explain what she did without making it sound as if she was bigheaded about it. She knew that some people in her position might have fixed him with a grim glare and told him she was one of the highest paid broadcasters in the State and could make politicians whimper for their mummies. But Ingrid preferred a low-key approach.

‘I work in television,’ she said simply.

‘Oh really! Interesting. My daughter worked in television for a while, researching stuff. It was a terrible job, awful pay and, goodness, there was no hope of really climbing the ladder.

Only a few seem to make it,’ he went on.

‘Yes,’ echoed Ingrid, ‘only a few do seem to make it.’

Ingrid thought of her years climbing the television ladder.

It had been challenging at times, but she hadn’t had to stiletto anyone in the groin to make it to the top - a fact that many people, interviewing her these days for newspaper profiles, found incredible.

‘It must be so much tougher for a woman,’ they said, eager to hear about glass ceilings, male-dominated power structures and male broadcasters bitching about her as they got subtly patted with Mac Face & Body in makeup.

‘The media - this part of it, anyway - is one of the few areas where women can do well easily,’ Ingrid would explain.

But nobody appeared to believe that her own calm self confidence and native intelligence had made it work.

‘What about you,’ she said politely to the Commodore, ‘what do you do?’

It was all the encouragement the Commodore needed. He was soon explaining the difference between a yacht and a boat, and Ingrid let her attention wander. Across the table, her husband seemed to be enjoying himself talking to a lovely woman who’d been introduced to her earlier as Laura.

She liked watching David. He was charming to everyone, not in a false way but in a way that said he was interested in other people. His father had been the same: always ready to talk to everyone in the store, from the cleaners to the general manager.

OK? David mouthed at her across the table.

Ingrid nodded imperceptibly. She was fine.

‘Sorry, you got stuck with Erskine,’ he said three hours later in the back of the taxi on their way home. He put his hand in hers and held it tightly, as they both sat back after what had turned out to be an incredibly heavy meal. Double cream with everything. Ingrid’s insides yearned for PeptoBismol.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was quite nice really, but I’m now an expert on boats and if I ever need to interview anyone on the subject, Erskine is the man I will ask.’

David laughed. He had a great laugh, rich and deep, the sort that made everyone else want to join in. Out of the corner of her eye, Ingrid could see the taxi driver grin as well. They were undoubtedly the sort of customers the driver liked: polite, sedate, middle-aged people being picked up from one beautiful suburban house and whisked off to another, with no chance of anyone throwing up in the back of the cab or not having the money to pay him.

‘Erskine probably didn’t have a clue who you were, did he?’ David asked perceptively.

‘Not the foggiest,’ Ingrid said. ‘I may have left him with the impression that I made the tea in the television studios.’

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done that!’ David laughed. ‘That’s cruel. I bet his wife knew, all right. She’s probably telling him the truth right now.’

‘No, it’s not cruel,’ Ingrid said. ‘He was terribly sweet and everything, but you know, he does live on this planet, he should be interested in politics.’

‘I’m quite sure he is interested in politics, darling,’ David replied mildly, ‘but not everyone watches television.’

It was an idea that Ingrid had heard many times before, but one that she could never quite grasp. She was of the opinion that people should know what was going on in the world, and television news and debate was an inherent part of that.

‘I’d say old Erskine sits at home reading copies of Yachting Man and books about naval battles from three hundred years ago,’ said David. ‘Happy in his own world. And why not?’

Ingrid shrugged. She and David would never agree on this one. He was able to forgive people for not wanting to read four newspapers a day, she wasn’t.

‘You were lucky,’ she said now, ‘sitting beside that gorgeous Laura person.’