Once in a Lifetime (54 page)

‘I came here to say sorry and ask you out to dinner,’

Marcella said.

Lorcan looked stony-faced for all of two seconds.

‘I thought I was too young for you, you were too old for me, and my mother was a major stumbling block?’

‘You are, I am and she is,’ Marcella said honestly. ‘So we need to talk, but I can’t let you out of my life without discussing the problems.’

‘My mother isn’t that much of a problem,’ Lorcan said.

‘She’s tough, but she doesn’t run my life.’

‘That’s not what I’m most anxious about.’

She looked around. There wasn’t much to sit on, so she went over to a low, dusty window sill and sat on that. He joined her, close but not touching.

Marcella steeled herself. Being brutally honest in business was a piece of cake; being brutally honest in relationships was terrifying.

‘I’d love to have your babies, I told you, but I can’t. I’m too old. When you hit forty-nine your time has run out in the baby-making department’

The slight joke was her way of coping with the harsh words.

Lorcan reached over and took her hands in his.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’d love you to have my babies too, but I’d already figured out that wasn’t on the menu. I’m not stupid.’

She grinned weakly.

‘I know all that and I still want us to be together.’

‘You already thought about it?’

‘Yes, how could I not with my mother mentioning it to me? But, like I told her, I want to be with you and I can live without kids if you can.’

‘What if it’s not enough?’ Marcella asked anxiously. ‘What if five years down the road, you change your mind and hate me for being old and not being able to give you babies?’

‘Marcella …’ He knelt in front of her on the marble floor.

‘Do you think anything in life has guarantees? It doesn’t. We love each other now and that has to be enough. You might want to dump me in five years to move on to a younger model.’

‘Cheeky!’ she said, but she was smiling, even though she was starting to cry. ‘You really want to make a go of it?’

His answer was a kiss and she felt herself melt.

How could she have ever thrown this away?

Marcella leaned against the hardness of him and closed her eyes. The sense of him holding her close, that was her home, even in a half-finished apartment block.

‘I’ve missed you, crazy woman,’ he murmured into the cloud of her hair.

‘Missed you too,’ she said.

The Mariner Pub was where the majority of the television station employees went at lunchtime. Cheap sandwiches, large portions of dessert and enough noise via the sound system to drown all the plots and gossip, made it a honey-pot for staff.

It was big enough to be anonymous and better than the station canteen because the higher-ups never went there. The last person Ingrid expected to see in the Mariner was Jim Fitzgibbon, David’s old friend, the one she’d only ever endured meeting.

‘Ingrid - at last!’ he said, as she stood in astonishment at

the till paying for her soup and sandwich. ‘I went into the television canteen looking for you,’ he said, ‘and they said a load of youse from the Politics Tonight office had come here.’

So much for privacy, Ingrid thought. Any mad stalker would be able to locate her within minutes.

You’ve a delivery of boiled bunny rabbit for Ms Fitzgerald?

No bother, she’s just down the road.

‘Hello, Jim,’ she said, drawing on years of experience in appearing mildly pleased to see people she disliked.

She didn’t have the heart to ask him how poor Fiona was.

The last time she’d seen her was at David’s funeral, and Fiona had come over to offer her sympathies. Alone. The separation was obviously final. Next up, divorce. Jim had shuffled across from the other side of the church, with the hideous Carmel - replete in floor-length mink - accompanying him.

In her wild grief, Ingrid had barely been able to look at Carmel, thinking of the last time she’d seen her, when David had been by her side, when life had been hers.

‘I need to talk to you, Ingrid,’ he said now.

He always sounded as if he wanted to off-load a shipment of fake handbags. Ingrid had never been able to gauge what David had seen in him; maybe it had just been a case of maintaining links with people he’d known at school. But Jim would never be her friend.

‘What can I do for you, Jim?’ she asked. He would want something from her, not the other way round.

‘Isn’t there a quiet spot where we can talk?’ Jim asked.

The place was emptying out after the lunchtime rush and a small table in an alcove had just been vacated.

‘Grab that one,’ she told Jim.

He sat and waited while Ingrid cleared away the previous occupants’ empty cups and plates, and cleaned the table down with a paper napkin. He was useless, she thought crossly, just watching her working.

Eventually, she was able to sit down and began to eat. It

was mushroom soup, her favourite. If only Jim would ask for whatever he wanted, and go, so she could read her paper and eat in peace. Her social skills were rusty; she didn’t want to go through the motions of being polite.

‘How have you been?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ said Ingrid. ‘Coping.’

‘Is probate sorted out?’

She eyed him suspiciously. Probate was a long, drawn-out legal nightmare. ‘What’s this about, Jim?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, clearly uncomfortable.

He fiddled with the knot of his tie.

‘I know what was worrying David,’ he blurted out suddenly.

‘I didn’t have the courage to tell you before.’ Ingrid instinctively looked around to see if anyone could overhear them.

‘The business,’ she said with deliberate calm. ‘I know, Jim.

As the person with a controlling interest in the store, the auditors have me on speed-dial, I know the store is in trouble.

We’ve been doing everything to try to save it. Is that what you wanted to tell me? That we should sell Kenny’s if we’ve any sense?’

‘No.’ He looked mightily affronted. ‘Not at all, I wouldn’t wish that on you, Ingrid. Don’t I know what Kenny’s meant to David, to you all.’ His red face was very earnest and Ingrid knew she’d offended him. ‘It’s worse than that. He was very worried.’

Jim stopped looking at her and began to stare into her soup bowl.

‘I won’t lie to you, Ingrid. He was terrified what would happen if you found out. About her.’

Ingrid’s hand began to shake and she had to put her spoon down. She had been able to hold herself together in the editorial meeting, and in her confrontation with Joan, but now, with her husband’s oldest friend telling her he knew about David’s darkest secret, she felt all her strength ebb away.

‘As God is my judge, Ingrid, I can tell you he loved you.

Loved you more than anything. He wanted to end it, honestly, no kidding.’

Jim chanced a look up at her face.

‘I thought that if they did any of that, you know, forensic accounting, they might come up with credit-card statements and the like …’

‘I found them,’ she whispered.

‘That can’t have been a walk in the park, if I may say so.

But I tell you, it was in the past. He was ending it, Ingrid, except these things take time. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ she murmured.

Jim’s pudgy hand patted hers in comfort. He was kind, she could see this for the first time. Behind all the bluster, Jim was a kind man, and no matter how hard it had been to come here today, he’d done it because his friend would have wanted him to. Jim knew she’d find out about the other woman, and he wanted to reassure her.

‘How do you know he was ending it?’ she begged, dignity forgotten.

‘He was trying to organise a job for her in London, away from here.’

‘Maybe he wanted to go with her?’ Ingrid said, all manner of scenarios springing up in her head. She wanted so much to believe what Jim was telling her. She’d meant it when she told Marcella that she would have forgiven David if only she’d known.

‘Oh no, he didn’t. He wanted her gone, believe me. He wanted her gone. He wanted me to give her a hand finding a flat.’

‘That’s what you were talking about that night at dinner.’

‘A little bit, that’s all. He made a mistake, Ingrid, and he knew that. David wasn’t like me. He appreciated you, and he told me I was an idiot for letting Fiona get away. He was terrified you’d find out and leave him. Now that doesn’t sound

like a man who was setting up shop with another woman in London, does it?’

Ingrid shook her head.

‘Oh and don’t forget the anniversary trip,’ he added, delighted to have thought of it. ‘You’d been talking about a short cruise, but he wanted to take you on one of those roundtheworld ones - three weeks! He was like a kid about it.

He’d hardly have been so excited if he wanted to head off with a young wan to London, now, would he?’

Jim beamed at her, and Ingrid thought of her David and a young wan, as Jim had put it. How young was young? And who was it? She knew that Babe had said it didn’t matter, that the only important fact was that the woman wasn’t someone in Ingrid’s life. Yet she wanted to know, yearned to know. Who was she, what age was she, was she young and beautiful, with unlined skin and a body that hadn’t lived through fifty-seven years?

‘Who was it?’ she asked.

‘Nobody you knew, just a girl.’

‘A girl?’ Hateful words.

‘Nobody you knew, a girl he had a fling with.’ Jim was getting loud now. ‘He made a mistake, Ingrid. That’s all you need to know. She’s gone, she was gone, really. He’d told her and he was trying to be kind to her by helping her with the job.’

‘Why did she need help with a job?’

Jim pulled at his tie again. ‘She wasn’t like you. She wasn’t clever or anything. I think it drove David mad, to be honest. There’s only so much of that daft-girl thing a man can put up with. You know, the sort of girl who doesn’t know how to change a tyre. Fiona could change a tyre,’ he added wistfully.

‘But she couldn’t change me.’

‘And David didn’t like this girlish behaviour?’

‘Ah, you know yourself, Ingrid, it’s very wearing. She wasn’t you, that’s all I know. That was enough for him. It was you he loved. Men do stupid things,’ he added.

Men do stupid things, Ingrid repeated to herself. Yes, they did, and then they were sorry for them. David had been sorry.

She could feel it.

She wasn’t sure why, but this conversation with Jim had eased her in a way that nothing else had. Jim was incapable of telling a successful lie, not one that would convince her, anyway. He was telling the absolute truth. Whatever this girl/woman had been to David, it had been over. She had to believe that. It gave her hope and strength.

‘Thank you, Jim,’ she said, smiling at him warmly. ‘Tell me, what about you and Fiona?’

‘I’ve burned my bridges there.’ He shrugged.

Ingrid shook her head. ‘If David had come to me and told me the truth, I’d have given him a second chance,’ she said, matching his absolute truthfulness. ‘You can’t throw away a good marriage over a combination of stupidity and what you were brought up to do. Talk to Fiona. She may have moved on, but you don’t know. Give it a chance.’

‘You think?’

Once, Ingrid had thought Jim’s features porcine. Today, they looked appealing, his warm little eyes eager in his face.

‘I think.’

Ingrid got up. There was somewhere she had to go, someone she had to see.

‘You haven’t finished your lunch ‘

‘Not hungry.’ She hugged him. ‘Thank you, Jim. You’ve given me great peace.’

Ingrid almost ran out of the restaurant and back to her car.

She had hope in her heart again. There was one more person she needed to see: Star Bluestone.

She wasn’t sure why, but when Babe had told her about Star, Ingrid had known that Star had some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. Perhaps David had confided in this woman he’d known so many years before. Maybe they’d met and talked often. If David could have hidden her existence

from Ingrid, innocent though it might have been, perhaps she knew things about David that Ingrid didn’t. The very idea upset her, but she shoved that to one side: she wanted to see Star and ask her.

Ingrid realised her knuckles were white. Driving while stressed - was that an offence? She loosened her grip on the steering wheel and tried to concentrate on what she’d say to Star Bluestone when she got there.

Star. What a strange name. It was, Ingrid thought, the name an ageing hippie might go by, and that was partly what she was expecting: a hennaed former rock chick with trailing skirts, hair like straw from decades of dye, and make-up from the children’s dressing-up box. All ghoulish eyeliner, smudges and the scent of patchouli oil.

It was easier to think of Star that way. Easier, too, because Ingrid had had Star’s tapestry hanging in her hall for at least three years and not once had David said: The artist was a woman I loved many years ago.

It was wild and remote out in this part of the coast.

Ingrid didn’t like remote places. Even on holidays. No, she’d always preferred soignee hotels in cities with culture close by.

Museums, galleries, the whole nine yards. David had agreed.

Or perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d been lying then, too.

Not that they hadn’t gone on holiday in remote places, but there had always been a bit of culture attached. The pyramids, the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall, the Library at Ephesus.

And Ingrid had liked it all, but there was a certain fear in seeing places so huge, so ancient. Beside them, Ingrid had felt that shiver of insignificance. No human could ever compete with this grandness of scale. She’d always been glad to get back to the hotel, to sit in a comfortable chair, sip tea from a china cup, turn on the television news and banish the wildness of the ancient world to the back of her mind.