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Authors: Sheila O'Flanagan

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BOOK: Things We Never Say
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She wasn’t entirely sure how the rest of his family felt about her. She knew that his father, Fred, thought she was attractive, because at their engagement party she’d overhead him speaking to his other son, Gareth, and saying that Donald had certainly applied a very different set of criteria to the second Mrs Fitzpatrick compared with the first, and that he’d upped the ante in the beauty stakes, which was no bad thing, the girl was a stunner. That had made her smile. She liked being thought of as a stunner.

Gareth’s response to his father had been non-committal, and although he was always perfectly courteous to her, Zoey couldn’t help feeling that he didn’t rate her as highly as he did his brother’s former wife. Gareth’s own wife Lisette was a bitch, though, with her haughty air and her way of looking at people as though they were beneath her. When they’d been introduced, Lisette had pecked her on both cheeks and said ‘enchanted’ in a way that Zoey thought meant the exact opposite.

There was a sister, too, Suzanne, who hadn’t come to the wedding despite being invited. Suzanne had sent a brief note with her regret card, saying that she was on business in the States and couldn’t come but wishing them every happiness. Donald had been annoyed at the card and muttered that Suzanne still carried chips on both shoulders, that there was nothing stopping her from coming, she was just a hotel employee after all.

Zoey had hoped she’d get on with Sorcha and Karen, Donald’s daughters, but she thought they were bitchy and self-centred and she hated how they only ever seemed to phone their father whenever they wanted something. Which, with both of them, was usually money. Zoey understood perfectly that girls of nearly twenty and eighteen needed cash, but she felt that they could be out there earning it themselves instead of sponging off their father, a habit they’d clearly inherited from Deirdre, who rang at least once a week complaining about something or other.

All in all, Zoey found that being Donald’s second wife wasn’t quite as easy as she’d expected, and she reckoned that an unquestioning payment of her credit card bills was the least he could do to compensate her for the fact that she had to put up with a lot of shit from other people with the Fitzpatrick name.

Another concern for Zoey – although it was for the future and not right now – was what would happen when they had a child of their own. She didn’t want her own precious baby playing second fiddle to the spoilt princesses Sorcha and Karen. She hadn’t discussed children with Donald yet. She wasn’t ready to give up on her social life and ruin her figure, nor was she sure that Donald was ready to start putting his second family ahead of his first.

Eventually, however, she hoped he’d disentangle himself from Disgruntled Deirdre and her grasping children. Just as she hoped he’d inherit a big chunk of his father’s estate. Zoey knew that Fred was a shrewd man; she reckoned he was far cannier than his sons. (She always took Donald’s assertion that he himself was a smart businessman with a liberal pinch of salt. A smart businessman wouldn’t have allowed himself to be shafted by someone like Deirdre.) She was aware that Lisette and Gareth were also hoping to cash in on Fred’s eventual demise, which was why she made sure that she called to Furze Hill every couple of weeks to see how he was. She always dropped in after she’d been for one of her many beauty treatments, and wore a low-cut top or a figure-hugging dress, which she knew Fred liked. It didn’t bother her that the old man ogled her. The way Zoey saw it, he didn’t have much time left and he might as well look because he was never going to get the opportunity to do anything about it. From her perspective, the time spent parading her assets in front of her father-in-law was an investment in her future.

She was hoping that it might result in him leaving the house to her and Donald. Zoey reckoned that they deserved Furze Hill. Donald was the eldest, after all, and he’d had to hand over his lovely Clontarf home to Deirdre. Gareth and Lisette’s house, Thorngrove, was huge. Suzanne lived abroad. So surely nobody could object to her and Donald getting Fred’s house? She could see herself having breakfast on the sun-drenched patio overlooking the sea (though it would have to be renovated first; at the moment the flagstones were cracked and uneven and a potential death trap. Mr Fitzpatrick was lucky that he hadn’t yet tripped over one and done worse things to himself than spraining his wrist). Furze Hill would be a big step up from their current home, and Zoey reckoned that Donald was entitled to it. After all, he’d been the son who’d stuck with the family business; surely he merited extra compensation for helping in its success?

However, despite the fact that her father-in-law was in his eighties, and had cheated death a few times already, Zoey wasn’t banking on Fred doing the decent thing and checking out just yet. Which meant that she still had to keep as much money as possible out of the claws of Disgruntled Deirdre and available to spend on herself, no matter how jumpy Donald got over the bills.

He hadn’t been too keen on the idea of a birthday party either, until she’d pointed out to him that it would be another occasion where he could provoke envy from his friends at having the most beautiful wife in the room. Zoey knew that the wives in Donald’s set couldn’t hold a candle to her, because most them were now relying on Botox, collagen and light-diffusing creams to look their best, whereas she still had the youthful, dewy complexion that they could only dream about. It was a boost to Donald’s ego to know that he was with Zoey, and she wanted to make sure it stayed boosted. Which meant looking her very best in front of all of his friends.

She knew she’d find the dress to help her do just that. And the right shoes, underwear, jewellery too … Zoey smiled to herself. She loved shopping. It was one thing in life that she knew she was really good at. And it was important that her husband was able to allow her to keep doing it.

Chapter 7

After his daughter-in-law had left (he’d been grateful for the shopping and for the bit of company, but he was still glad when she’d gone), Fred went into the living room, with its panoramic views of the sea. But he wasn’t interested in the views today. He opened the web browser on his computer and clicked on his search history. He wanted to go back to some of the pages he’d been looking at earlier.

Fred was comfortable with computers. He’d always been at the forefront of new technology, which was why he’d done so well in the car alarm and security business. He thought machines were a lot easier to understand than people, and far more predictable.

He loved being able to find things out at the click of a button, but it annoyed him how easily he was distracted from the pages he’d set out to look at. Clicking links dragged him off into areas where he didn’t need to be but which intrigued him all the same. He understood why it was called surfing – that was exactly what he felt happened to him every time he was pulled from page to page in an undertow of irrelevant information – but it irritated him all the same.

He opened the last item he’d been looking at and then realised that it was the image of an old newspaper and not the page he wanted. He’d originally searched for it out of curiosity, but events from the year he was born didn’t interest him very much. Fifty-five years ago, though, that was a different story. Fifty-five years ago mattered a good deal to Fred. Despite the proliferation of information on the internet, however, none of it was relevant to what he wanted to find out. The truth was, Fred thought to himself as he clicked on another futile link, he needed a professional to do the work for him. In his younger days he might have been able to track down the people he wanted to track down, but as it was … He grunted in disgust and rubbed his injured wrist. He hated being eighty-one. He hated that he couldn’t depend on his once virile body to behave as he wanted it to behave. In his youth he’d jeered at doddery old gits who took half an hour to cross the road. These days he was a doddery old git himself and he only crossed the road at pedestrian lights. Old externally, of course. Internally he was the same person he’d always been.

Although that wasn’t strictly true. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the keyboard. He was a very different Fred Fitzpatrick from the twenty-five-year-old Fred. Or the forty-five-year-old Fred. Or even the sixty-five-year-old Fred. The last few years were the ones that had changed him. And now he was a softer and less driven Fred. Maybe even a regretful Fred.

He hated having regrets, that was the thing. He never used to regret anything. He didn’t regret for a second all the time and energy he’d poured into his business over the years, even though he knew of lots of people who said that they wished they’d spent more time with their families. He thought he’d spent exactly the right amount of time with his. He didn’t regret spending the money he’d made on buying a statement house in one of Dublin’s most affluent areas. He didn’t care that he was rattling around in it on his own, or that most of his neighbours were – in his eyes – pretentious tossers. (He didn’t regret not getting to know them either. Assholes, the lot of them.) He didn’t regret his marriage to Ros, or even the affairs that had peppered it. These things happened. There was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t regret how he’d brought up his children, because in the end, they’d learned to stand on their own two feet. He’d had a reason for everything he’d done, at home, at work, socially. He’d lived a full life, a happy life, and if there was one thing he’d learned during it, it was that there was no point in regrets.

But damn it, he couldn’t help regretting Dilly. He couldn’t believe that he kept thinking of her now, her pretty heart-shaped face infiltrating his dreams and reminding him that he’d once loved her. He didn’t want to have to chalk Dilly up as a regret. But he couldn’t help it. He’d have to do something about it.

He couldn’t have said or done anything when Ros was alive. That would have rocked the foundations of their marriage in a way that his occasional affairs never had. Ros knew nothing of Dilly and he’d seen no point in telling her. His wife had been an understanding, supportive woman (her friends called her a saint, but of course she bloody wasn’t; she just knew that she wouldn’t do any better than him), but she wouldn’t have been supportive about Dilly. He knew that.

Funny how he hadn’t thought of Dilly in years, yet now, when there were times he couldn’t remember what he’d gone into a room for, he could recall everything about her. Her peaches-and-cream complexion, her soft blue eyes, her mane of golden hair and her luscious, desirable body. When he thought of Dilly, he felt young again, he felt like the carefree Fred he’d been in the days before he’d had to worry about a wife and a family and a business that had been twenty-four-seven before anyone had ever used the expression. Sometimes he wondered how his life would have turned out if he’d treated her better. If he would have been a better person himself. If he wouldn’t have anything at all to regret.

He grunted. He was being stupid now. Stupid and maudlin and acting like an old man. The past was a different country. He knew that. And as for the present … despite his physical infirmities, he was still a powerful man. He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction with the power that he knew he had. He’d seen it reflected in Lisette’s eyes when she’d caught sight of the will. He’d meant for her to see it. He liked to remind her that he was still very much a part of the family.

Not that they should need any of his money now, of course. They had jobs of their own, houses of their own, lives of their own. Nevertheless, everyone had gone through hard times over the last few years, and he knew that they weren’t as comfortably off as they might have expected to be by now. But perhaps that was their own fault too. Perhaps the knowledge that he was there in the background had made them take the wrong kind of risks.

One way or another, though, they still had expectations. They needed to tailor those expectations, thought Fred. He’d been generous to them before, and that generosity wasn’t boundless. Besides, he now had other interests, other obligations to think about.

He’d call Alex Shannon in the morning and chat to him about it. His solicitor knew him well and would be able to advise him on the best way to go about things. Fred had a lot of faith in Alex. Even so, maybe it wouldn’t work out. If it didn’t, well, he’d rethink his future plans. But if it did, he’d have important decisions to make. It was unfinished business, after all. And Fred didn’t like unfinished business hanging over him.

PART 3
THE DISCLOSURE
Chapter 8

Abbey Andersen worked late on Fridays, which was always one of the salon’s busiest days. Today had been even busier than most for her – in addition to her regular manicures and extensions, the list of clients wanting nail art was growing all the time. Her last appointment had been identical twin sisters who were throwing a birthday bash and had asked for matching party nails with lots of bling and glitter. The girls were excited about the party and chatted throughout their time with her, commenting enthusiastically on the design she’d devised for them and telling her that she should set up her own website with pictures of all her work. Because, said one, they’d never seen nail art as funky and original as hers, and it was a shame not to share it with everyone.

She told them that there were plenty of samples of her stuff on the Mariposa site, but if they were OK with it, she’d add their nail work too. The girls agreed happily, gave her a generous tip and told her that they looked forward to seeing it there. Then they headed off, still chattering and giggling. Abbey smiled as they went. She got a tremendous buzz from seeing clients leave the salon happy, and the Benson twins had been fun to work with. They weren’t the first people to have suggested to her that she set up a site either, she reflected as she sent the photo to Selina to add to the gallery. Her own friends had said it to her too. The last time she’d seen Pete, he’d told her that she should leave Mariposa and set up on her own, but then Pete was big into people being entrepreneurial and working for themselves. She usually dismissed all of these suggestions. She was happy to be part of the team at the salon. She was in her comfort zone. Besides, she saw too many stressed-out women trying to fit a little bit of pampering into an over-full day to want to take on stress of her own by working for herself.

BOOK: Things We Never Say
13.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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