Quentins (5 page)

“You could come in for coffee another night. Like tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow's bad for me—a big political fund-raiser—I have to be there glad-handing people.” He sounded regretful.

“Oh, well.” She made herself shrug.

“Monday night?” he offered.

Deirdre had told her not to be too available. “Bad for me, Tuesday or Wednesday are fine though.”

“Tuesday, then, I suppose, since it can't be earlier. Suppose I brought a bottle of truly lovely wine, would you cook me a steak?”

“It's a deal,” said Ella, who wondered how any human could get through the number of hours between now and Tuesday at eight o'clock.

They had had the full Irish breakfast, and Miss Holly came to talk to them. “Nice to meet Don Richardson last night.” Ella's mother wanted to show that they were anyone's equal.

“Ah, yes, wonderful family man, Mr. Richardson,” said Miss Holly, nodding in approval. “You see it all in this business. Mrs. Brady, believe me, so many of our so-called business leaders don't have the same standards as they used to, no, indeed.”

“Brings his family here a lot, then, does he?” said Ella in a strained voice, stabbing at the sausage on her plate as if she wanted desperately to kill it.

“Well, no, he works so hard, you see. Usually it's just his wife and her father and the children, but Mr. Richardson always rings and orders them some special wine, and when he can he's with them.”

“That's nice,” said Ella, suddenly feeling a great deal better.

She kissed them good-bye at Tara Road and refused to think about the fact that they might spend a lonely, wordless afternoon now that she was no longer there to be the central point of their life. She had done her best to get them to sell this big place. To liberate some money so that they could go on a cruise, get a better car or whatever they might like. She knew that it wouldn't matter where they lived or how much money they had, they were not going to take their future in their own hands and make the best of it. Which is what she, Ella, was going to do. She was going to get involved with this dangerously attractive man no matter how many turnings there would be in the road ahead. And if she got hurt, then she got hurt, that's all there was to it.

Her phone rang. She pulled in to the side of the road but it wasn't what she had hoped. It was Nick, her old mate from college.

“Oh, Nick,” she said.

“Well, I've had warmer receptions,” he said.

“Sorry, I'm coping with traffic,” she lied.

“No you're not, you fibber, you've pulled in, I'm in the car behind you.”

“Is this a police state or what?” she said, and leaped out of the car to give him a hug.

“I saw you ahead of me and I wondered if you'd like a late lunch.”

“Like it? I'd love it, Nick.”

They sat companionably as he told her all about the dramas in his life and she told him nothing about the dramas in hers. Nick was such an easy person to talk to,
such a friend. No need to explain anything or wonder about what he was thinking. It was all there on his handsome freckled face and in his big green eyes. He was wearing a black leather jacket, and sunglasses sat on his head. It would have been so
uncomplicated
to love someone like this instead of what she had got herself into. She looked at Nick affectionately. He would never know what she was thinking.

When they had last met he had just set up a small independent film production company called Firefly Films with two others and they were doing quite well. Much better than they had hoped. They still did a fair bit of bread-and-butter work like videos of weddings and advertising things, a lot of word of mouth. That's what it was all about in Dublin today—Nick had been able to point a job to this couple, Tom and Cathy, who ran a catering company called Scarlet Feather. And apparently it had gone well, so now Tom and Cathy in return had gotten him a job to film and edit a big fund-raising event tonight. Huge money, the guy wanted to pay in cash but hey, that was okay too.

“Tonight?” Ella's eyes were dancing.

“Yeah, he wants a nice neat fifteen minutes of the highlights showing as many celebs as possible and literally just the best sound bites, no long, tedious speeches . . . we could do it in our sleep.”

“Nick, can I come with you? To help. Please.”

“Hey, Ella, you don't want to be involved in any of this kind of business!” Nick was startled.

“
Please.
I beg you. I'll get you coffee, I'll carry your bags.”

“Why?”

“I just want to, we're friends. You wanted to have lunch with me and I said yes, why can't I say I want to go on this gig with you tonight and you say yes?”

“You'd be bored.”

“Please, Nick.”

“Okay, but you do get to carry my bags, do you hear?”

“I love you, Nick.”

“You love
someone
certainly; you're as high as a kite,” he said. “But it's not me.”

She met them outside the hotel later in the evening. She hardly recognized Nick, he was so businesslike and efficient.

“This is Ella. She knows nothing but she's here to help,” he said casually.

Ella grinned. “I always wanted to be in movies,” she said, joking.

“Well, you picked the wrong team, tonight's only video,” said a small, earnest-looking girl who did not at all like the tall, blond Ella coming in on the act.

“Look, I promise I won't be in the way.” Ella concentrated on the girl; the two men were no trouble and couldn't have cared less about her. “Just tell me what to do or to get out of the way and I'll do it.”

“Well, okay, thanks, then.” The girl was gruff.

“What's your name?” Ella asked.

“Sandy.”

“Well, Sandy, I mean it, anything I can do?”

“Why are you here?” Sandy was blunt. She fancied Nick greatly and probably in vain. But as far as she was concerned, Ella was a threat.

“Because I'm keen on someone who's going to be here and it was the only way I could get in.” There is never anything as good as total honesty.

Sandy believed her immediately.

“And is he keen on you?”

“Not enough,” Ella answered, and they were friends for life.

She tidied away their gear into corners, got a pot of coffee from the kitchen, asked the office to let them
have three photocopies of the seating plan rather than the one they had been given. And was in fact quite useful and helpful until she saw Don Richardson come in with Margery on his arm.

This time she wore dark green silk and what looked very like real emeralds. She knew everyone and they were all kissing her on the cheek. Today was Sunday, yet she looked as if she had come straight from the hairdresser. She just may have had somebody come to her house. She was like a little porcelain doll. Ella felt tall, ungainly, sweaty and out of place. From behind a pillar she watched as Don spoke swiftly to Nick, telling what needed to be done, where to position himself. And then she did no more to help anyone in Firefly Films; she stood there twisting a table napkin around in her hands and watching Don Richardson. He had said tonight was bad for him to meet her because he had to do a lot of glad-handing.

She wasn't even sure what the word meant.

Now she knew. It was shaking hands and at the same time gripping the person's other arm firmly above the elbow. It was looking into their eyes and thanking them for their support. It was turning to introduce them to other people with a fixed smile of gratitude. And Don Richardson did it very well.

Ella had no idea how long she stood there while others in the great dining room ate through a five-course meal. But Don didn't sit down either, he moved from table to table, talking here, laughing there, always nodding imperceptibly at Nick if he wanted him to turn the camera on groups. Margery sat at a table and talked easily with politicians and their wives. Margery's eyes never roamed the room looking for him, wondering was he hesitating too long at this table, laughing too animatedly with the two bosomy women who did not want to let him go. Was this because she knew how to play it?
Giving him a long lead meant he always came home? Or had he been telling Ella the truth that they really did have separate lives?

There was dancing now, but Firefly Films' work was over. Don Richardson hadn't wanted to film any red-faced groping on the dance floor. The party supporters would want to see video of themselves looking decorous, mixing with the party leader, with cabinet ministers and celebrities. That's what Nick and Ed and Sandy were going back to the office to do now, edit the video and copy it for Don Richardson. It had to be in his office the next day by lunchtime. It would mean working all night.

“I don't suppose you're going to come and
help
us some more back at base, Ella,” Nick said without any hope.

“I'd love to,” she said guiltily. “It's just I have school tomorrow morning, you see.”

“Why did I know you were going to say that?” Nick gave her a brotherly pat on the behind.

Sandy wasn't jealous anymore. As they walked to her car, Sandy whispered to Ella, “Did you see him?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“Did he see you?” Still a whisper.

“No, no, he didn't.”

“Are you glad or sorry you came?” Sandy had to know. Again, total truth is very satisfying.

“A bit of both, to be honest,” Ella Brady said, and slipped out the back way before she might see Don Richardson hold out his hand and ask his tiny emerald-wearing estranged wife to dance.

She got a taxi home and stayed awake until five
A
.
M
. After two hours she woke groggy and bad tempered. And when she got to her class, she didn't feel any better. “If you know what's good for all of us, you lot must be no trouble today,” she warned the fifth-graders, who were inclined to be difficult.

“Was it a heavy night, Miss Brady?” asked Jacinta, one of the more fearless troublemakers.

Ella strode so purposefully toward the girl's desk that the class gasped.

Miss Brady couldn't be about to hit a pupil, surely? But that's what it looked like. Ella stood, her face inches from the child. “There's always one in every class, Jacinta O'Brien, one smart-ass who goes too far and ruins it for everyone. In this class you are the one. I was going to treat you like adults, tell you the truth, which is that I didn't sleep and don't feel too well. I was going to ask for your cooperation so that I could give you as good a lesson as possible.

“But no, there's always the smart-ass, so instead we will have a test. Get out your papers this
minute
.”

Ella gave them four questions, and then she sat there trembling at her outburst. She had said smart-ass. Twice.

This wasn't the kind of school where you said that.

She had meant to say smart aleck. Oh, God, why couldn't it be Tuesday? Then she could see Don Richardson that night.

But she got through the day and was relieved to get home.

“I understand you've started stalking him now,” Deirdre said on the phone that night.

“How did you hear that?” Ella gasped.

“It was in one of the gossip columns. I can't remember which,” Deirdre said. As usual, Ella fell for it.

“What?”

“Oh, shut up, Ella, you eejit. I met Nick and he told me you wanted to crash Don's big fund-raiser with him.”

Ella began to breathe again.

“Some capital city this is, you can't do anything,” she grumbled.

“Well, you haven't
done
anything, have you?” Deirdre reminded her.

“No. Tomorrow night,” Ella said. “It would have been tonight, but I remembered what you said about not being too available.”

“Can we meet lunchtime Wednesday?” asked Deirdre.

“No, that's my short lunch . . . it will have to wait till after work.”

“Early bird Quentins? My treat?” Deirdre offered.

“Early bird starts at six-thirty. I'll be there,” Ella promised.

There was an old clock on a church tower near Ella's flat. It was just striking eight when he knocked on the door. “I'm boringly punctual,” he said. He carried a briefcase, an orchid and a bottle of wine.

“I'm just delighted to see you,” Ella said simply. There was something about the way she said it that made him put down everything on the table and take her in his arms.

“Ella, Angel Ella, I'm never going to hurt you or be bad for you in any way.”

There was a choke in his voice as he spoke into her hair. “Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you, believe me.”

And as she looked at him before she kissed him properly, Ella knew this was true.

They put the orchid in a long, narrow vase and got about the business of preparing dinner. He sliced the mushrooms, she made the salad. They had a glass of cold white wine from her fridge. And he opened the bottle of red he had brought before they sat down in the most normal and natural way, as if this was where they had always lived. She didn't ask him would he stay the whole night because she knew he would. They talked easily. He said he had enjoyed meeting her parents.