Once in a Lifetime (42 page)

‘Thank you, Jack.’ Ingrid kept smiling. She’d never liked Jack and she was entirely sure that he returned the favour, but they had worked together quite well. Joan, who was ready to hop into her shoes, would be much more his type of news presenter: young, malleable and willing to go along to his parties, like a pet, tamed and ready to be on show. Ingrid had never been that person. She wasn’t going to be now, either, but she was prepared to give a little to get what she wanted.

‘You look good too, Jack,’ she said. ‘How’s the handicap, still in single figures?’

This approach always worked; Jack was a golf fanatic and he liked talking about his game.

‘Oh, you know, I don’t get much chance to play these days,’

he said.

Liar, thought Ingrid, who knew damn well, via Gloria, that Jack played three times a week: the working week. One rule for the boys and one rule for the girls. She wondered how many female executives got to skive off three times a week.

‘You’ve been so kind with compassionate leave,’ she added.

‘It was wonderful, I really needed it. But I’m ready now.’

Another lie.

‘You’re sure you want to come back?’ said Jack.

Ingrid gave him the megawatt smile she saved for television and said: ‘Of course, Jack, that’s what I’m here to talk about.’

‘How was it?’ asked Gloria, when Ingrid had made it safely back to her own office and shut the door.

‘OK,’ said Ingrid tightly.

‘Just OK?’

‘I hope I haven’t left it too late.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Gloria. ‘Of course you haven’t, Ingrid.

You are the show. Every week we’re getting hundreds of emails and letters wondering when you’re coming back. I’ve not been able to deal with them all.’

‘The people who write the emails don’t run current affairs,’

Ingrid said, ‘That’s what this is about. It’s also about the fact that Joan has an agent, an agent who’s very friendly with Jack.’

Ingrid had never had an agent, mainly because when she started out on her television career the talent didn’t have agents, but now everybody did. She had stuck to managing her own career with a little help from David when it came to the numbers. He was always able to draw up a fantastic proposal for salaries. But just what had he been thinking when he was drawing up those proposals, she wondered bleakly.

His betrayal still hurt so much. Most of the time she tried not to let the pain in, tried just to think that David was gone and that she had to cope without him. But sometimes it got

past her, the absolute torment that not only was he gone but he’d betrayed her too and she was never going to be able to find out why.

‘What’s the plan now?’ Gloria asked.

‘Well, I’m going to ease myself in gently,’ Ingrid told her assistant. ‘That’s the way I put it to Jack. I didn’t want to make it sound like I was taking over the planet, so I said I’d come in, see how everything is, and start working properly next week.

‘Carlos wants you to come along to today’s editorial meeting,’ Gloria said.

Ingrid nodded. In for a penny …

It was like she’d never been away, except for the presence of Joan, who was more groomed than Ingrid remembered. Her hair was blonder, sleeker, and her clothes were sharper. She sat at the exact other end of the boardroom table and watched Ingrid the way Wile E. Coyote watched Road Runner.

When did I become the enemy! Ingrid stored it up to talk about to Marcella later. She could remember mentoring Joan a few years ago, when Joan had come into the show after being at the coalface as the station’s court reporter. Joan had been eager then, fond of wearing anoraks to fend off the cold of live outside broadcasts, and admiring of Ingrid. Not any more. She wanted Ingrid’s job.

The queen is dead, long live the queen, Ingrid thought to herself. Well this queen was very much alive. And would kick if necessary.

The first story was about the energy crisis, although Martin, who’d clearly had a going-over from his wife’s divorce lawyer, had a solution to the problem: ‘The venomous soon-to-be-ex wife power supply,’ he said balefully. ‘Who needs nuclear energy when you have first wives going nuclear all on their own. It’s an endless supply of rage. Could power a whole country.’

‘Martin, enough,’ groaned Jeri.

‘You wait,’ he snapped, ‘until Mr Perfect Triathlon person says he made a mistake, that you probably shouldn’t have ever got together, but at least you’d never had kids and could you possibly be civilised about the break-up … and then, you’ll lose it.’

‘Martin!’ Carlos rarely raised his voice, but when he did, people listened.

‘Sorry.’ Martin got up and left the room.

Ingrid stared at his departing back. Did all spurned wives turn into nuclear power stations of fury? Would she have done the same if David had given her the option and left instead of dying?

She’d have hated to become that kind of person.

The meeting ended with a discussion about a forthcoming interview with the Minister for Finance. Without a word being said, everyone turned to Ingrid as they spoke about this. She knew it was because she had the most experience interviewing him, she’d done it many times. She could just about see Joan’s face, cold with anger. Ingrid was back and had slipped effortlessly into her old role without anybody saying, ‘But what about Joan?’

Once, Ingrid might have gone to Joan afterwards to discuss this. But she had no energy left in her for such things. If Joan stuck around long enough, she would have the job one day.

Ingrid herself knew she didn’t have forever. But right now, she needed it more than Joan did.

‘It’s yourself!’

The mailroom man saw her as she crossed reception on her way out.

‘We’ve got a pile of post for you in the mailroom. Bags of it.’ He suddenly appeared to remember what the post was likely to say. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Ingrid,’ he added. ‘You’ve been missed around here.’

‘Thank you,’ she said and she meant it.

Today, she was able to be grateful for even the small things.

She’d come back to work, she had a big interview to do next week, and people had missed her. It wasn’t everything she wanted, but it was enough for today.

Fifteen

Life seems so long when you’re in the middle of it, but when you know its going to end soon, you realise how little time we have on earth. Don’t waste it.

Kitty, Brendan and Charlie sat in a box in the theatre, waiting for the curtain to come up. It was the first night of Iseult’s new play, Dancing With Their Lives, the theatre was groaning at the seams and Iseult had arranged for an enormous bottle of champagne in an ice bucket to be delivered to the box, a bottle which Kitty had made Brendan open as soon as they’d arrived.

However, Iseult, the guest of honour, wasn’t with them. She was backstage talking to the cast and the director. Kitty was quite cross that she’d only been allowed backstage for five minutes before being gently, but nonetheless firmly, ushered out by Iseult. Charlie had been surprised to see her mother return so quickly.

‘You weren’t long,’ she said, taking in her mother’s flushed cheeks that matched the burgundy raw-silk dress she was wearing.

Her mother looked great, she had to hand it to her. Nobody would have guessed that a few weeks ago, Kitty had been

hobbling around after breaking her hip, devoid of makeup and despondent.

Tonight, her hair was a triumph of the hairdresser’s art, with lots of little Medusa curls clustered around her face. Her make-up looked amazing and Charlie figured her mother had definitely had some cosmetic work done, although she would undoubtedly deny it if she asked.

‘Good genes, taking care of myself,’ she liked to say if anyone asked.

Whatever, the effect of Botox or fillers was now slightly ruined by the irritated look on her mother’s face.

‘There’s sort of palaver going on back stage,’ Kitty said crossly, settling herself in the box like the Queen Mother at a command performance ‘They don’t want outsiders there.

As if I’m an outsider!’

Behind her, Charlie and Brendan exchanged a grin. Charlie reached out and took his hand. It was lovely being here with Brendan. He calmed her so much. She had been dreading tonight. It wasn’t that she wasn’t looking forward to seeing the play itself. Iseult was so talented and the play was bound to be fascinating. No, it was more that she knew her mother would be in I’m-the-playwright’s-mother mode, with attendant airs, graces and tantrums.

Kitty had been delirious with joy earlier in the week when a profile of Iseult was printed in the Irish Times. In it Iseult was quoted uttering the immortal words: My mother has been such an inspiration.

When Charlie and Brendan picked Kitty up from her house to take her to the theatre, the cutting was stuck to the fridge with sellotape. She’d probably frame it, Charlie thought crossly, and then was angry with herself for sounding all bitter and resentful.

Detach with love. She had to let go. Her mother’s relationship with Iseult was their business and if it was strong, lucky

for them. Neither of them had what she had, which was a wonderful marriage and a wonderful son.

Her new mantra was that you can’t change how people carry on or think, you can only change how you react to them.

Well, that was the theory. No matter how often she tried to tell herself these things, in reality it was different.

‘Relax,’ Brendan mouthed to her across the box.

She stuck her tongue out at him good-humouredly and he did the same back. What was it about being in Kitty’s presence that made them feel so juvenile? Charlie could think of no other circumstance where she’d dream of sticking her tongue out.

It was the Kitty effect, for sure. Brendan was amazing. He tolerated her so well, given that he had nothing in his past to help him understand someone like that. His family were totally normal.

At the weekend, they’d been at his parents’ house for Sunday lunch and it had been so relaxing. Jenny and Stephen were retired school teachers. Stephen was a quiet man who said little and smiled often, like Brendan himself. Jenny was a lovely, strong woman who’d reared six children and gone out to work, which hadn’t been easy. She was a stalwart of the local church, a fabulous cook and was very involved in her children and grandchildren’s lives, but never in an overbearing way.

Needless to say, Kitty hated her.

‘She’s very pious, isn’t she?’ Kitty would say. ‘And the hair.

You’d think she could do something with her hair!’

Jenny’s hair was short and wispy and never saw the inside of a hairdresser’s salon.

Kitty’s dislike of Jenny had upset Charlie for years but not any more. The gratitude journal must be working, Charlie decided. Reading back over things she’d written helped her understand them. She now understood, for example, that her mother’s dislike of Jenny was more to do with jealousy than anything else. Kitty was always going on about women’s rights and the importance of work, yet she hadn’t worked outside the home after getting married.

Jenny had raised her family while succeeding at a full-time career that saw her ultimately become vice-principal of a national school. It wasn’t superiority that made Kitty dislike her, Charlie thought, it was a sense of inferiority.

‘Is this damned play ever going to start!’ snapped Kitty now.

Yes, Charlie decided, it was merely that her mother was upset at having been sent away from the backstage excitement.

She was like a child denied fun. Understanding did help.

By the end of Act Two, Charlie had forgotten her mother’s temper and was riveted to the stage. The central character of the play was a dying woman who was looking back over a life that took in one world war, and many deaths, marriages and love affairs, through a series of flashbacks. Her family were at her bedside and through each of their eyes, Iseult’s play examined their relationship with their mother. The play had such depth and the actors were so marvellous that Charlie found it hard to remember the funny stories about rehearsals that Iseult had told them. All those things were forgotten as she stared at the stage and watched this amazing story unfold in front of her.

One strand of the play that absolutely fascinated her was the story of the youngest daughter, the person who sobbed most at her dying mother’s bedside. Slowly it became clear that she didn’t share the same father as the other children.

Her father was the mother’s true love. A man she had to love in secret but adored more than anyone else, even her other children. That, Iseult seemed to be saying, was why there was this special bond between mother and child.

‘Oh, I see,’ breathed Charlie out loud, although nobody could hear her because everyone was watching the stage.

The theatre seemed to recede and she thought suddenly of the first time she’d had an ultrasound when she’d been pregnant with Mikey.

Brendan had been beside her, holding her hand, the two of them watching the screen as the sonographer traced the shape of the baby inside Charlie’s womb. On the screen, the picture looked like lots of random speckled dots, and Charlie, although she was desperate to see what her baby looked like, couldn’t work it out.

‘Now, there, that’s the head. See?’ said the sonographer, reaching out and touching the screen.

Instantly, it had all made sense. Charlie could see her baby’s fragile face, then one little hand stretched out with tiny stubby fingers, and the legs, all curled up.

Charlie had got the picture. Like now. Iseult might have claimed, as she had in the Irish Times interview, that she was writing about a fictional family, but there was something at the core of this play that was very dear to her. She might convince everyone else that it was fiction. In fact, she might believe that herself. But even though there was no other character and no other scenario in the play that bore any resemblance to Iseult’s real life, Charlie was quite sure that her sister’s heroine was really Iseult herself. Which meant she and Charlie weren’t both Anthony Nelson’s children.