The Matchmaker (11 page)

‘You love Thornton’s. Don’t let seeing that so-and-so stop you working there,’ her sister declared fiercely.

‘I can’t believe I’ve been such an absolute eejit. I should have guessed that there was something going on. Even the night of his birthday he couldn’t go for dinner! I should have suspected he was seeing someone else but I didn’t. I genuinely thought that he was obsessed with his career and working far too hard. Big fool me.’

‘You trusted him, Grace. We believe the people we love; we trust them.’

Grace wondered how it was her youngest sister had become so mature and grown up and unselfish. Having Evie had changed her totally, making Sarah so protective of the small baby that she had to raise without a father that she had become wise and reflective beyond her years.

‘He’s been such a shit, lying to me, hiding what was going on with Ruth.’

‘Well, then it’s better for everyone that things are out in the open now.’

And so the conversation went on. Grace cried and cried for what seemed an age, Sarah sitting beside non-judgementally, handing her tissues and soothing her, putting her snotty hankies in the bin and passing her glasses of water.

‘Grace, it’s going to be OK. We’re all here for you. Mum and Anna and me. Shane wasn’t good enough for you. You deserve better.’

‘That’s what Mum keeps saying.’ Grace sniffed. ‘She’s like a broken record about it.’

‘Plenty more fish in the sea and all that!’ Sarah risked a joke.

Grace smiled wearily. ‘Honestly, I’ll kill her if she says it one more time!’ she sighed. ‘Mum has no idea just how hard it is to meet a decent guy! I’m going to be thirty soon and the fact is that I might never meet someone.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Grace, guys always fancy you,’ said Sarah loyally. ‘You’ve your career and an apartment of your own and a car! I’ll never be able to afford even a banger of a car at the rate things are going.’

‘Sarah, you’re the lucky one,’ said Grace, suddenly feeling guilty. ‘You have Evie. She’s the most beautiful little girl in the world. I’ll probably never even have a child, and end up a sad old maid living on my own.’

‘Somehow, I doubt that.’ Sarah tossed her long fair hair back off her shoulder and snuggled up on the bed with her sister. They curled up together like when they were kids.

‘Mum’s making a stew,’ Sarah warned her sister.

‘Stew!’

‘Beef with all the works. She was cutting up carrots and parsnip and onions down in the kitchen.’

‘Oh God!’

‘Got to feed a broken heart. You know Mum. She’ll fuss and feed you and force you to get back on your feet. The thing is I’ll probably end up doing the same with Evie when she gets dumped by some awful boy.’

Grace found herself actually laughing. ‘That’s scary.’

‘You’re going to be OK, honest,’ Sarah reassured her, serious again. ‘Listen, I’d better go down before Evie has Mum demented with the whole house measured.’

The smell of onions and the meaty stew wafted up the stairs. Grace had forgotten how hungry she was. Maybe she would get up and have dinner with the others. She checked her phone; all day long she’d been getting missed calls and texts from her friends. There was absolutely nothing from Shane. Deciding that he was no longer relevant in her life she deleted his number from her address book. But her hand had hovered over the number before she had firmly pressed the delete button.

Anna had called over after work armed with a giant bottle of Lucozade and a big bag of wine gums, Grace’s childhood favourites, and insisted she give a blow-by-blow account of the disastrous dinner.

‘Salmon cakes, pork with Calvados, cake!’ Anna muttered fiercely. ‘What a waste!’

When Grace got to the part where she had hurled the stone lizard off the balcony into the water, she suddenly found herself laughing out loud at the absurdity of it as her mother and sisters tried to control their own giggles.

‘You should have thrown Shane in the bloody river!’ teased Anna, her blue eyes blazing.

Sitting around the kitchen table later with Mum, Sarah, Evie and Anna, eating floury potatoes and plates of her mother’s warming stew with its soft chunks of vegetables and rich sauce made her realize that even though one part of her life was a total screw-up her family were the best . . . the very, very best!

There was only so much comfort a body could take and after another two days of the Ryan family flapping around her like protective bodyguards and, eating her way through a constant round of homemade bread, scones, apple tart and sponge cake, Grace decided it was time to move back to her apartment and get back to work.

She cleared the remnants of the celebration meal into the bin, along with Shane’s favourite cheese and the full-fat milk that he liked to have in his coffee as she cleaned the place. She’d return Shane’s gift to the jewellers, and, doing a quick sweep of the apartment, bundled his two Quentin Tarantino DVDs, a bottle of Hugo Boss aftershave, a toothbrush, comb and a navy golf shirt into a carrier bag. She was tempted to donate them to charity but decided to hand them in at the office’s reception desk instead. Niamh O’Halloran, one of her best friends, had sent her a succinct text:
F . . . him
before arriving at eight o’clock with Lisa, Claire and Roisin, some of her old school pals, to cheer her up. She knew the girls were trying to be supportive in her hour of need but she just wanted to get back to work, even if it meant meeting him.

Picking out her most expensive suit, a pair of Italian boots that she had bought in Milan and a classic white Quin and Donnelly shirt, she dressed quickly the next morning, determined to be in the office early, sitting at her drawing board long before Shane appeared.

Thornton’s was housed in one of the most modern and iconic buildings in the city, built overlooking the docks, its ten-storey steel and glass corner structure catching the sunlight. Her office was on the fifth floor and she passed the giant sculpture of a bronze fish leaping from the water that stood in the atrium as she rode the glass lift to her floor.

The office was quiet, with only the hum of cleaners hoovering the top-floor offices as she sat at her desk. Grace’s heart sank as she saw the backlog of emails on her computer and she began to trawl through them. Kate Connolly, her secretary, had left a pile of post on her desk with the most urgent letters on top alongside a list of phone messages. It would take her at least a day to get through this and she had the Carroll project to be getting along with. Ray Carroll was due in the office tomorrow afternoon and one thing the property magnate did not take kindly to was delays or poor presentation of work. If need be she would work all night on it. She slipped off the black jacket of her suit and began to quickly read through the emails. It was good to work like this without interruption before the rest of the staff came in. She heard Ali Delaney pass down the hall. They nodded at each other through the glass partition.

‘Feeling better?’ Ali called politely.

‘Yes, thanks.’ Grace was tempted to confide in the other woman about her predicament with Shane but she wasn’t sure how much office gossip she had been privy to. Ali was the office manager. She lived down in Kildare and made a point of coming in early every day and leaving at four p.m. It was the only way she got the time to spend with her family of three boys. Instead she returned to her screen as Ali made her way to the office at the end of the corridor.

An hour later the building began to buzz. She could see the queues of traffic all over the city as her work colleagues began to arrive, phones ringing, copiers and faxes growling into action. She wondered if Shane was actually in the building. How was she to handle it? Ignore him? Pretend their love affair had never happened? She was totally at a loss as to what she should do.

Kate arrived in at eight fifty a.m., she got the Dart to work every day and was as punctual and reliable as they came.

‘Morning, Grace, it’s nice to have you back. I left a list of calls and letters you need to deal with on the desk.’

‘I found them, thanks. Any word from Ray Carroll?’ Grace asked in the vague hope he might have rescheduled their appointment.

‘Suzie from his office phoned on Friday so it’s still on track for tomorrow.’

‘Good.’

Grace realized there would be no reprieve and she began to pull out the file for tomorrow’s meeting. The preliminary drawings she’d worked on looked good but knowing him he would want far more detail.

‘Kate, can you hold all calls unless they are really urgent as I have to get this done for tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘No problem, if you need anything let me know.’

Grace worked all morning, skipping the usual visit to the top-floor canteen for a coffee break. She kept an eye out to see if there was any sign of Shane, but was relieved that he seemed to be nowhere about. At lunchtime she was busy drafting a new design for the three-bedroomed apartments Ray Carroll was so keen on.

‘There’s got to be space for a family,’ he always insisted, ‘and toys and books and clothes. We’re building for real people.’

Grace pored over the drawings again to see if there was any way she could fit in more storage space without losing the airy feel of the apartment. The corridors outside were wide and very spacious but would people prefer to have that extra space within the apartment? She touched the drawings on the computer screen wondering if she could try an alternative. Kate had got her a turkey and cranberry roll and coffee from the canteen which she munched on as she printed out the new versions. She was so engrossed she barely heard the door open.

‘Grace.’

Shane. He was standing there wearing the grey pinstripe suit she’d picked out with him a few months ago in London.

‘How are you?’ he asked, closing the door behind him.

If he hoped she was going to collapse in a heap and beg him to come back he was mistaken. She was determined to remain composed and calm in front of him.

‘I’m fine,’ she lied.

It was unbearably awkward between them and she didn’t know how it could possibly be resolved.

‘I’m sorry, Grace.’ He did have the grace to look genuinely shamefaced. ‘It was never my intention to hurt you. You must know that. Ruth and I had gone our separate ways and had no plans ever to see each other again. It just happened!’

‘Shane, I’m really busy,’ she said firmly for she’d absolutely no intention of getting involved in a discussion about the end of their relationship here in her office with a client or staff member liable to walk in. ‘I’ve Ray Carroll in tomorrow and I have a ton of work to do and—’

‘I just wanted to check that you’re OK.’

‘Well, you did,’ she snapped. ‘And I am. I have not disappeared down a hole no matter how much you might have wished it.’

He looked pained and uncomfortable.

‘Do people in the office know we’ve broken up?’

‘A few do. I told Derek and Paul, and Ruth and I ran into Louise and Gavin when we were in Fitzers on Sunday.’

‘So basically the fact that we are no longer an item is pretty much common knowledge!’

‘Yes,’ he said tersely. ‘I’d guess most people know by now.’

The silence between them hung heavy.

‘Grace, I’d like us still to be friends . . .’ he began. ‘We work together and—’

‘I don’t need two-timing fecking friends who do the dirt on people,’ Grace replied angrily. ‘Working together is fine but otherwise please just leave me alone!’

Shane looked relieved and simply nodded and quit her office.

‘Good riddance,’ she mumbled under her breath.

‘Mr Smooth gone?’ Kate buzzed a few seconds later.

Grace was surprised that her secretary had the nerve to call him that to her face. ‘Yep.’

‘Ray Carroll is on line one for you.’

‘Shit,’ she responded before taking the call, realizing that her hands were still shaking.

‘Good afternoon, Grace, how are you?’

She took a deep breath and managed to seem poised and in control again as she assured her client that all was set for the next day. ‘I won’t let you down,’ she promised. ‘The new designs are looking exciting.’

Grace sat back in the leather chair a few minutes later. She still had to perform, do the job that she was trained for and be a professional. The adrenalin rush she got from seeing a job like this come together was what had made her become an architect, studying for six years and breaking her guts to work in a firm like this. Breaking up with Shane had nothing to do with it. She could let this situation with him reduce her to an emotional mess unable to complete her projects or she could pull herself together and lose herself in her work. The latter seemed a much better option and she decided to concentrate on the job in hand. Getting involved with Shane O’Sullivan had been a huge mistake, and was one she would definitely not repeat. She was through with men! Hell would freeze over before her mother would see her on some man’s arm walking down the aisle. Forget marriage and romance. From now on Grace was focusing all her energy on her career.

Sarah Ryan studied the screen of her computer. She was online checking the balance in her meagre bank account, dismayed by the usual lack of funds. Clicking the mouse she went on to her emails, sending a funny few words to a few of her friends who were ensconced in offices around the city. Truth was, she was bored and, checking the clock on the wall, she saw she’d another hour before she had to collect Evie from school. They’d go to the butcher’s and the local grocer’s and then grab a DVD of Evie’s favourite programme
Angelina Ballerina
on their way home.

Next year if she had found some magic way of improving their finances she hoped to send Evie to dancing class, where she could pirouette and hop and skip with all the other little girls who were equally mad on ballet. Her mum and Grace had both very generously offered to pay the weekly dance class fees for her daughter but she had turned them down flat.

‘Evie’s still a bit young,’ she’d fibbed, unwilling to accept one more jot of charity from her over-generous family.

‘Don’t be so stubborn,’ Grace had chided. ‘Mum, do you remember how mad we all were for dancing classes? Do you remember when we used to go to Miss Hickey’s and she made us pretend that we were flowers and swans?’