Once in a Lifetime (52 page)

He slowed down and smiled over his shoulder again at Rosemary. She was dark-haired, with a lovely tan. That was what had reminded him of the long-ago Chiara, and even wearing her black, beautician’s outfit, Rosemary looked amazing. The simple tunic top clung in all the right places.

Yes, his father would have approved.

‘Hello, Mr Kenny,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Would you like to try our new fragrance?’

David stopped and shook his head. ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘My wife might wonder if I came home smelling of…’

he looked at the bottle carefully, ‘Honeyz.’

This time, he favoured Rosemary with a more paternalistic smile. He could see her becoming flustered, as if she’d overstepped some invisible line. Of course she hadn’t really, but David knew better than to mess around on his own doorstep.

‘Are you enjoying working here, Rosemary?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes, Mr Kenny,’ she said.

‘Good. I like the staff to feel happy,’ he said and walked on.

No, his dad had taught him a lot of things about the business and chief among them was never dally with anyone who worked in Kenny’s. Don’t dally with anyone would have made more sense, but that was impossible.

He’d been scared out of his mind the year before when Ingrid, the whole office of Politics Tonight and, indeed, the whole of the country had been agog over a murder case which involved a married school headmaster and several teacher girlfriends.

The headmaster was the accused, the murder victim was his alleged girlfriend, one of his staff, and his alibi centred upon another female staff member. Ingrid, who wasn’t easily shocked, was horrified. Shocked on behalf of the dead woman and shocked on behalf of the headmaster’s bewildered wife, who’d known nothing until the police came to arrest her husband.

It was the sort of case Ingrid disliked working on because she felt there was no way to report it except sensationally, and she loathed sensationalism.

‘How could she not have known?’ she said to David one evening as they sat at home over dinner. ‘She must have suspected, there had to be something. He’d need a motorbike with a jet engine attached to get round to them all.’

She’d been so fired up about it, she put down her fork and stared at David across the table.

‘She must have known. I’d know,’ she added, almost angrily, glaring at him.

For several, terrible moments, David thought that she did know, and all the things he ought to say deserted him, leaving only cliches there.

It wasn’t anything, it didn’t mean anything, Ingrid, it’s you I love.

All he could think was that, if only he could turn the clock back, if only she didn’t throw him out, he’d never do it again.

He loved her so much: loved her, loved the children, didn’t want to destroy their lives. Even if the headmaster was innocent of murder, his whole life had been laid open, the whole world could see his infidelities. David felt sick to the stomach at the same thing happening to him; not that he’d murder anyone, God, but imagine it all coming out. And stranger things had happened. Ingrid was a public figure. Her picture was in the papers if they went to a film premiere or award ceremony.

‘Sorry,’ Ingrid muttered. ‘I’m getting carried away. You poor love, having to deal with me coming home at night, fired up on other people’s injustices. It’s just this case is driving me nuts. So, tell me about your day.’

And David let out a breath, gently, carefully, in case she realised he’d been holding it in.

‘Oh, nothing much to tell,’ he said. Thank you, thank you, thank you, he whispered inside his head. That’s it, never again, no quick flings on business trips abroad, nothing, ever. Look at all you’ve got, look at all you could lose, don’t do it.

‘I love you, you know that,’ he said to Ingrid.

‘You’re so sweet,’ she said. ‘I’m being the crazy, journalist wife and you still love me. Thank you.’

He hadn’t meant to after that, really hadn’t. It was just the opportunities had been there. A trip away, a hotel room, a

woman who smiled admiringly at him. He recalled an internet joke he’d received about the differences between men and women:

Why do women cheat, was followed by a litany of convoluted reasons.

Why do men cheat? Because the opportunity presents itself occasionally.

Then he met Steffi. And after Steffi, everything was different.

It was lunchtime in the Hat Box Cafe, and David, who sometimes had an early sandwich there before the rush, was holding his tray and his newspaper, looking for somewhere to sit.

In front of him, at a small table at the window, was Claudia.

‘David, this is my sister, Steffi,’ Claudia said, as David bent to put his tray on the table next to hers. When he straightened up, the girl sitting with Claudia put a hand forward to shake his and he found himself staring into an exquisite little face, with wide-spaced blue eyes, and a smile just as bright as Claudia’s. While Claudia was dark - he later found out that she took after their father - Steffi was a true blonde like their mother, with the most amazing hair, silky as the model’s in a Timotei commercial and just as long. She was older than Claudia, probably mid twenties, but somehow looked younger.

Like a fairy from the Tinkerbell products they sold at the till in the children’s department, David thought admiringly.

‘How lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.

Claudia never stops talking about how wonderful you are,’

she said guilelessly, and David, used to people being pleased to see him because of some scheme they wanted to run by him, felt himself melt.

‘I haven’t heard anything about you,’ he said, and moved his tray from the table next door to theirs. ‘Which is a terrible state of affairs,’ he added. ‘Where.have you been hiding her, Claudia? Kenny’s needs gorgeous creatures like Steffi around.’

Steffi laughed happily. She had a light melodious laugh, not

like Claudia’s effervescent giggle. Definitely Tinkerbell, he decided.

‘Steffi dropped by to show me her new car,’ Claudia said.

‘She just got it yesterday.’

‘It’s ten years old and it’s a lovely silvery blue,’ said Steffi excitedly. ‘But it makes a very strange noise when you go up hills. A sort of clanking. I don’t know why. Do you think it’s all right, or should I go back to the man I got if from? I haven’t a clue about cars.’

‘I’ll have a look at it for you,’ said David.

Steffi put her small hand on his arm and he felt a frisson of excitement. ‘That would be so kind of you,’ she said.

And David, who’d been talking to a sombre accountant all morning about cash-flow projections, felt ten feet tall.

He’d looked at the car that evening and somehow, because Ingrid was going to be out late, it seemed natural to take Claudia and Steffi for a dish of pasta afterwards, where they all chatted and laughed, and it was all very innocent, David told himself.

He had several glasses of wine and Steffi insisted on dropping him home because he shouldn’t drive.

‘Just drop me at a taxi rank,’ David said.

‘Goodness no, you’ve been so kind to me, I’ll take you right home,’ she said. ‘You can tell me how I’m driving. It’s ages since I had a lesson, and I’m very bad on hill starts.’

If only Claudia hadn’t said she needed to grab a few groceries, so she’d meet Steffi later at the flat they shared, it wouldn’t have happened.

Sitting in her small car outside his house, a house he knew was empty, David planted a kiss on Steffi’s soft cheek and suddenly found himself asking her out to dinner again, alone.

‘I’d love that,’ she said, eyes wide like a fawn’s.

There was nothing overtly sexy about Steffi. With her innocent blue eyes and curtain of blonde hair, she was the maiden

waiting for her champion to come, and David fell at her feet.

Steffi never demanded anything of him, never.

She simply wanted to be with him. It was heady, exciting and hugely sexually thrilling. He’d found it took so much longer to get aroused these days, and although he’d never said anything about it to Ingrid, it upset him. But with Steffi, he was ready in an instant.

It wasn’t her youth, he told himself, particularly when he had nightmares about Ingrid finding out. It was her gentle compliance. She was naive and charming, and perfectly willing to phone the flower shop where she worked and tell them she couldn’t come in when David had to go away on business and asked her to accompany him.

When he was with her, he felt the power and energy he’d had when he was a young man. But as soon as he left her, the guilt would set in.

Ingrid would be devastated by his betrayal. His other amours had been short-lived, but this wasn’t. Six months became a year became two years and counting. He knew that no woman would want her husband to have an affair, but he imagined trying to explain this one to Ingrid and knew that, while he’d have had some hope of repairing their marriage after a short, purely sexual fling, his relationship with Steffi would mean the divorce courts. Two years with a very young woman who was the polar opposite of Ingrid was indefensible.

It would destroy Ingrid and their marriage. Forever.

Twenty

Do what makes you happy. Tell the people you love that you love them. forget about waiting for a rainy day. do it.

Ingrid’s new hairstyle caused ructions in the press.

First, it made headlines: Short sharp shock for Ireland’s queen of politics.

Next, came the feature pieces where women with long, curling manes of hair were photographed - unflatteringly beside women with coolly short styles like Ingrid.

Women who mean business, Tan the headline, followed by: how Ireland’s movers and shakers are turning their backs on girlie curls.

‘You’ve started something with your new haircut,’ said Gloria to Ingrid, as they sat in Ingrid’s office with the papers spread out in front of them.

‘That wasn’t the plan,’ said Ingrid, putting on her glasses to peer more closely at one photo of herself with her new hairstyle interviewing a politician.

Her hair was still blonde, but instead of flowing gently around her shoulders, it was closely cropped to her head, so her bone structure and intelligent eyes were what people noticed, not a

mass of hair. It suited her incredibly well, she had to admit, although it worked better because of the weight she’d lost.

This had all come about after that night with Marcella, Carla and Nikki, where seeing the older, skinny woman with the facelift and the Barbie hair had made her shudder at the thought of ageing badly.

Her hairdresser had refused to do it at first. ‘You’ll sue me,’ he said, clutching his scissors close to his chest.

‘I won’t,’ said Ingrid, folding up the picture of Judi Dench she’d brought in as inspiration. ‘If you don’t do it, I’ll go home and hack it off myself, and then come back for you to fix it.’

‘You’ve lost it totally,’ he groaned. ‘C’mere. Let me at you - but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You could go shorter by degrees, not whack it all off in one go.’

‘I like the idea of whacking it all off in one go,’ she said.

‘Zero tolerance for hair.’

‘If this starts a trend, we’re in trouble,’ he went on gloomily.

‘Just because you have decent bone structure, doesn’t mean everybody else has. The place will be jammed with moonfaced women wanting Ingrid Fitzgerald haircuts and they’ll look like the Teletubbies when they get them.’

Despite herself, Ingrid laughed. ‘I’ve never started a trend in my life,’ she said. ‘And you’re being very cruel to other women. Who cares what they look like with short hair as long as they like it themselves. Life isn’t a catwalk and real women aren’t models.’

‘So says you,’ he replied.

Sure enough, a few days after Ingrid appeared on Politics Tonight with her new haircut, the papers were predicting a rush for short, sharp cuts.

‘It’s freeing,’ Ingrid said to Gloria, rubbing her hands through the sleek, spiky hair. ‘No effort at all, just wash, dry for five minutes, rub some wax .into the ends, and I’m ready.

Should have done it years ago.’

They’d just come out of a meeting about the next day’s

programme. It was going to be an important show because the Minister for Health, currently embroiled in a scandal about cancer facilities, had finally agreed to come on the show.

The mood in the editorial meeting was jubilant, except down Joan’s end of the table when the producer said that Joan would be doing a report on women who’d been misdiagnosed with cancer, while Ingrid would be conducting the studio interview with the minister.

Jeri, the production assistant, poked her head round Ingrid’s office door.

‘Hate to tell you, but Joan is spitting she’s not getting the interview with the minister,’ she warned Ingrid. ‘She’s just marched into Jack’s office.’

Ingrid felt tired in a way she hadn’t all day. It was the sense of Joan’s fury towards her, an entirely wasted emotion, given that Ingrid wasn’t in competition with Joan. If only she would understand that Ingrid worked for her own self-worth and not solely to annoy Joan, then it would be so much easier.

But Joan didn’t get that she and Ingrid could actually support each other. They were the only women in elevated positions in a male-dominated world. Men were the senior players and men played them off against each other. Joan was too busy fighting her perceived corner to understand this.

Six months ago, Ingrid would have let her be, but not any more.

She waited until Joan emerged from the head of current affairs’ office, then intercepted her in the women’s toilets.