The O’Hara Affair (41 page)

While she waited for the computer to purr into life, Fleur picked up a folder marked CASTING that was lying beside the keyboard, and rifled through the contents. There was page upon page of printouts of casting forms, attached to colour headshots. All the headshots were of beautiful young women, and all of them were gazing at the viewer with yearning in their eyes. Fleur recognized many of them as local girls, some of whom she’d seen in costume the day she and Dervla had visited the movie set.

She scanned the details on the casting forms: wannabes not only were expected to include such personal information as hair colour, birth date, body shape and measurements (including bust and cup size), there was also a wealth of contact details: day phone, evening phone, mobile, terrestrial address, email, URL to personal website. Corban had at his fingers an assortment of girls who would come running at the click of a mouse and the touch of a key: he was like a gourmand with his hand hovering over a box of delicious sweetmeats, wondering which one to pick next.

He’d got the icing on the cake with Anastasia Harris: how many more of these little cupcakes had he drooled over? Fleur felt bile rise in her throat. Dropping the folder, she reeled into the bathroom and threw up. His aftershave was on the shelf above the basin. She never wanted to smell Giorgio Armani again. Holding the bottle at arm’s length, she unstoppered it, poured the contents down the loo, and flushed. Then she wove her way back to the study.

The printouts and photographs lay scattered on the floor:
all those images of exquisite young girls, blossoms all of them, waiting to be plucked. In the nineteen forties, Fleur knew, Hollywood executives had organized beauty pageants all over America and the UK, offering as prizes six-month contracts and a chance to become a movie star. The winners were flown to LA and kept for the delectation of the money men, in an arena known as the Talent Department. Nothing much would appear to have changed.

As she stooped to pick up the photographs, one face leaped up at her. It was Bethany O’Brien. Bethany was smiling a little shyly to camera, hair looped behind one elfin ear, chin on her hand. She had scrupulously filled in all her contact details, including her Dublin address and her address in Coolnamara. Curlew Cottage, Díseart. All her telephone numbers were there, all her measurements had been filled in to the exact centimetre. She’d described her body shape as ‘slender’, her personal look as ‘a young Winona Ryder’. At the very top of the form, in Corban’s handwriting, was the single word ‘Poppet’.

Fleur rose shakily to her feet. The screen of Corban’s desktop was all aglimmer with icons. Organizer. Google Earth. Media Player. The O’Hara Affair. Second Life. She reached for the mouse, and clicked. ‘Welcome Hero Evanier’ she read. In the password bar, Fleur typed theoharaaffair with numb fingers. Outside the Globe Theatre, like Frankenstein’s monster, Hero came to life.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Scared that she might be sick again, Fleur clamped her hands over her mouth. Hero Evanier, Bethany’s virtual boyfriend, was Fleur’s lover. No, no! He was her ex-, ex-, her
ex
-lover. Corban O’Hara would never set foot inside her home again. Sitting down at his desk, she stared at his avatar, then depressed a key and sent him walkabout. There was nobody on Shakespeare Island for him to
prey upon. She went to ‘Locations’ and scrolled down. There were listed all the places Bethany had told her about during one of their MSN conversations. The Hollywood backlot, the book shop, the pool hall, the Blarney Stone pub, Sweethearts dance club. There was Bethany and Hero’s cottage.

Taking a deep breath, Fleur teleported. The cottage was empty. Unsurprising. It was one-thirty in the morning: Bethany was probably tucked up in bed in her real-life cottage down by the sea in Díseart.

It would appear that some housework had been done: it was unlikely that Hero had been responsible. There was a broom by the door, and new curtains at the window – curtains printed with little pink hearts. The flowers had been changed, the marguerites replaced by yellow tulips. And there was something else new. A bookcase. Fleur checked out the titles on the spines. Yeats, Keats, Christina Rossetti. Romantic poets all. Bethany had hoped to invite romance into her life, and instead she had opened her door to a monster.

Fleur thought back to the last time she’d been in this virtual cottage, when Hero had taken her upstairs and barraged her with obscenities. He’d known who she was. She’d told him that her avatar’s name was Flirty LittleBoots. Why had he invited her to the cottage? What had been in it for him? Had he got off on the fact that he could verbally assault her? What was his
thing
?

Fleur knew now that she’d been having an affair with a complete stranger. Nothing about Corban O’Hara added up; nothing was as it seemed. He was all façade: as fake as the famine village that had been built with his money. It felt horrible; it felt sordid. She remembered how he’d first approached her, mistaking her for someone called Rachel. Had Rachel even existed? Had he made her up, used a
fictitious persona as a device to seduce a gullible woman in fancy dress, just as he had used a fictitious persona – an avatar called Hero Evanier – to seduce…
to seduce Bethany O’Brien
? Fleur felt a nauseating flash of fear. Bethany was safe enough right now, but for how long?

Touching the keypad, she pressed X, and sent Bethany and Hero’s cottage spiralling into the ether. Then she tidied the casting folder, extracted Bethany’s photograph and its attached details, turned off the lights, and left Corban’s lair.

On the street, it had started to rain. Fleur welcomed the sweet coolness of the water as she walked barefoot through puddles. She would take a shower when she got home: wash away some of the filth she felt had accumulated on and around her since she’d entered theoharaaffair into Corban’s security system.

By the pier, she stopped to look down at the sea. Its pewter surface was dimpled and pockmarked with raindrops. On its mooring, the
Lolita
slumbered, rocked to sleep by waves.
Lolita
. She should have known. Young girls were Corban’s thing. That’s why he’d abused her in his virtual cottage – because he wouldn’t get away with it in real life, without blowing his cover. Fleur was his ‘beard’ – that term they used in Hollywood to describe the woman who was reeled in to marry the gay film star, because otherwise his career would be toast. That, Fleur realized now, was why sex with Corban had always had to have something a little kinky about it, some element of make-believe. All that role-playing had been necessary to stimulate his appetite. Corban wasn’t interested in forty-something flesh. He wouldn’t ever have bothered with Fleur if he hadn’t needed a mistress nearer his own age and conveniently resident in Lissamore as a decoy to distract attention from the real objects of his lust: girls who were only just legal. All those teenage hopefuls who had filled in
their casting forms so diligently, not knowing that they would be perused by a salivating predator.

Lolita.
The name of Nabokov’s nymphet. Fleur would never be seduced onto that boat again – and she’d make sure that Bethany O’Brien would never be seduced onto it either. Fleur O’Farrell was armed and dangerous now, and she had two lethal weapons. She had her ex-lover’s pornographic home video. And she had Hero Evanier’s password.

Dervla had approached her mother-in-law with extreme apprehension when she’d brought her breakfast that morning, fearful that Daphne might start to talk in tongues again. But Daphne was more than usually chipper, and had even said a gracious ‘Thank you’, before tucking into her Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

Now she had been washed and anointed with
Je Reviens
, and was ensconced in the sitting room, listening to
Appointment with Death
again.

Dervla was due to leave soon for her recce of care homes. She made tea for Daphne and coffee for herself and for Finn, who was sitting by the edge of the pond in the courtyard throwing a ball for Kitty. Kitty was in seventh heaven: nobody had played with her for days. As Dervla left the kitchen, she gave a little shriek. On the hall carpet was a beetle the like of which she had never seen before. It was big, with horny things growing out of it and a pattern like leopards’ spots.

Dervla put down the mugs she was carrying, fetched a glass from the kitchen, and trapped the insect underneath. Then she ran to the open front door. ‘Finn!’ she called. ‘Can you help?’

He got to his feet. ‘What’s up?’

‘There’s a thing – a kind of beetle – on the floor. Could you do something about it for me, please?’

‘Sure.’ Finn joined her in the hall. ‘Wow,’ he said, hunkering down and examining the creature through the glass. ‘The last time I saw something like that was in Thailand.’

‘How could it have got here?’

Finn shrugged. ‘It probably came into the country in a container of bananas or something.’

‘That must be how that spider got in too,’ said Dervla. ‘I had to kill a spider the size of your hand the other day.’

‘Go get me a postcard or something, Dervla, so I can slide it under the glass and get rid of this yoke in the garden,’ said Finn.

Dervla went into the kitchen and came back with a coaster. She watched as Finn slid it under the glass and flinched when the beetle scuttled to the wall of its prison.

‘Who is it?’ Daphne was standing in the doorway of the sitting room looking suspicious. ‘Is it a man?’

‘Yes,’ said Dervla. ‘Finn is here to look after you because I have to go out.’

‘Are you having an affair?’

‘What?’ Dervla looked startled, and Finn laughed. ‘No! Finn is my nephew.’

‘A likely story! Get out of here, young man. And you too, madam. Who do you think you are, consorting with paramours under my very roof? Go on – be off with you!’

‘But Finn is here to look after you—’

‘I don’t need looking after. Fuck off the pair of you.’ And Daphne stumped back into the sitting room.

Dervla gave Finn a look of entreaty. ‘What’ll we do?’ she whispered.

‘Let’s take our coffee outside. By the time we’ve finished, she’ll probably have forgotten all about us.’

‘Good idea.’ Dervla fetched the mugs, then joined Finn,
where he was back sitting by the side of the pond. ‘What did you do with the beetle?’ she asked.

‘I dumped it in the compostor. It’ll love it in there.’

‘As long as it doesn’t start breeding.’ Dervla sat down beside her nephew, and handed him his coffee, then: ‘Holy
shit
!’ she screamed, and clutched his arm. A fat frog had landed right next to her foot.

‘Another of your mother-in-law’s familiars,’ observed Finn.

Dervla started to laugh. She laughed and laughed until the tears came. ‘Oh, Finn,’ she said finally, after the frog had leaped back into the pond, ‘what am I going to do?’

‘Don’t worry, auntie dear. I’m here to help. And if I can’t help, Ma will. And if Ma can’t, Fleur will, and if Fleur can’t, Da will. We’re family. We won’t let you down.’

Dervla linked his arm and hugged it to her. ‘You have a very wise head on such young shoulders, d’you know that?’

‘I’m a scuba diver,’ said Finn. ‘Scuba divers are pretty zen about most things. My next challenge is to get Da down to a hundred and thirty feet.’

‘Correction. Your next challenge is to win over my mother-in-law.’

He smiled at her. Finn’s smile was like his father’s – crinkly-eyed and warm. ‘I’ll do it. No worries, Dervla. You finish your coffee and get on with your mission. Kitty and I will hold the fort.’

Dervla took a swig of coffee. ‘How are you getting on with the film?’ she asked.

‘Looking forward to the wrap party, if truth be told. But not half as much as Da. He hates this fucking film.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Corban O’Hara’s started behaving like a megalomaniac. He’s even making changes to the script. That is so not kosher.
It’s like all the power his money has bought him has gone to his head.’

Shit. Maybe they wouldn’t be inviting Corban to dinner in the Old Rectory after all. Dervla wondered if Fleur knew about this. ‘Well, you know what they say, Finn. Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Dervla drained her mug, and got to her feet. ‘I’d better take you in to Daphne and reintroduce you.’

‘OK.’ Finn got to his feet. ‘Stay, Kitten,’ he said authoritatively, and Kitty gave him a reproachful look.

In the sitting room, Daphne was looking as enraptured as if it were the first time she’d ever heard
Appointment with Death
.

‘Daphne,’ said Dervla brightly. ‘You have a visitor!’

‘Who is it?’ she snapped, annoyed at being interrupted.

‘It’s my nephew, Finn.’

Daphne looked up, and her stony expression softened when she beheld the vision that was Finn. ‘Good evening, young man,’ she said. ‘Would you care to join me for a gin and tonic?’

‘It’s a little early for a gin and tonic, Mrs Vaughan,’ said Finn, diplomatically. It was actually just midday. ‘But I would love to join you for a cup of tea.’

‘Yes. Maybe that would be better,’ said Daphne, adding, ‘fetch this young man a cup of tea!’ to no one in particular.

Dervla slid out of the room. She slipped into her shoes and located her bag, and then she tiptoed out of the house. On her way past the sitting-room door, she heard Finn say: ‘So this photograph is of you! Well. You were a good-looking woman, Mrs Vaughan, that’s for sure. Still are!’ Dervla smiled. Like father, like son…

‘I’ve never been too coy to accept a compliment,’ replied Daphne graciously. ‘Thank you, young man. What did you say your name was, again?’

The first care home Dervla visited – La Paloma – looked promising. It was only twenty minutes’ drive from the Old Rectory, the gardens were beautifully maintained, and the reception area was bright and modern and airy, with a high ceiling and big Velux windows. In a glass porch to the right of the front door, a coffee table surrounded by easy chairs had a magazine rack attached to it, in which were copies of today’s
Irish Times
. An elderly man looked up from the paper he was reading with the help of a magnifying glass and smiled at her as she made her way across the foyer to the reception desk.