‘You were discussing him with Granny,’ she points out.
‘That was different.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘It just is.’
‘What sort of family trouble?’ demands Dave.
‘Nothing sinister,’ I reply. ‘I thought it was a bit strange at first that he wanted to be driven to a pretty run-down part of town, given that he’s so well-off, but it’s where his dad lives.’
‘How run-down?’ Dave won’t let it go.
‘I’d say it’s more neglected than run-down,’ I amend.
‘Have you met the father?’
‘Of course not!’ I exclaim. ‘I drive people where they want to go. I don’t meet their friends and family.’
‘What did you say this guy did?’
‘He works for a pharmaceutical company.’
Dave pours himself some tea from the pot.
‘What kind of pharmaceuticals?’
‘How should I know?’ I ask.
‘Because . . .’ He lowers his voice, but Mica and Tom have taken their cereal bowls into the living room. ‘What are pharmaceuticals, Roxy?’
‘Huh?’
‘Drugs,’ he says dramatically. ‘Have you considered that he might be a drug dealer?’
Ivo Lehane? Dealing drugs? It’s laughable. Ivo is a successful man who had a row with his dad but is coming back to see him even though he doesn’t want to. That’s all. Then I think about his apparent wealth and his reluctance to check his bag in at the airport, and a niggle of doubt creeps in. Nevertheless, I tell Dave not to be ridiculous.
‘Back and forward every week,’ Dave says. ‘It could be some kind of network. He could be a mule.’
‘I really don’t think so.’ I shake my head. ‘He’s a businessman.’
‘There’s something not quite right about it,’ says Dave. ‘And I’m not sure you should be mixed up in whatever it is.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ I’m getting annoyed now. ‘He’s a client, he’s paying over the odds . . .’ and then my voice trails off as I consider that he might be paying over the odds because he’s in the drugs business, and that everything he’s told me might be a whopping lie.
Dave is watching me carefully.
‘He’s a businessman,’ I repeat. ‘Honestly, Dave, it’s fine. He’s a decent person. And the fact that he’s obviously pulled himself up from his roots and got on in the world doesn’t make him some sort of criminal.’
‘Hmm. Well, I’m not happy about it,’ says Dave. ‘I know I said you could keep driving until I was back for good, but I’m having second thoughts now.’
I don’t need Dave’s actual permission to drive. He doesn’t own me.
‘And you should be finished by five o’clock anyway,’ he says. ‘It’s not right you being out so late.’
I clamp down on my annoyance with my husband. He’s concerned for me, that’s all.
But he doesn’t need to be. I can look after myself.
Chapter 17
The office where I’m meeting James Mallon, Alison’s tax-adviser colleague, is in the docklands area. I know it quite well because there are a lot of businesses here and I’ve collected many of their executives from their various glass buildings. It’s also quite close to the Gibson Hotel, where I first picked up Ivo Lehane. But I’ve never gone into any of the offices before and I’m a little overawed by the reception area of Hunter Crowe, where James and Alison work. It has a huge marble atrium that allows natural and internal lighting to combine, and it’s furnished with potted plants, leather seats and rugs with piles so deep that my H&M high heels leave indentations in them. In the centre is a futuristic fountain with LED lights changing the colour of the water, while the glass walls of the offices mean that visitors can see the hive of activity on each floor.
A perfectly groomed receptionist tells me that James will see me shortly, so I perch on one of the leather chairs, glad that I’m wearing my newest navy suit and that my white blouse is the one with the snazzy silver buttons. The H&Ms are also my highest-heeled shoes. It’s good to be wearing them again, even if I’m a bit out of practice. Those extra inches give me more confidence.
The lift pings and I look up. A sandy-haired man wearing a dark grey suit, white shirt and red tie steps out and walks towards me.
‘Roxy McMenamin?’ he asks. ‘I’m James Mallon.’
I shake his hand and he leads me to the lift, which whisks us up to the fourth floor. I follow him to a large meeting room with views over the River Liffey.
‘Coffee?’ he asks, and I say yes, even though, possibly for the first time in my life, I don’t really want any.
There’s a machine on a sideboard and he makes two cups, handing one to me.
‘So,’ he says. ‘Alison King told me to look after you.’
I’m too intimidated to do anything but nod.
‘And what Alison wants, she gets.’ His smile is relaxed and friendly and I release the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
I emailed Alison information about Christy’s Chauffeurs as well as some spreadsheets of the accounts a few days earlier, and James Mallon now takes them out of a transparent folder and fans them out on the desk in front of him.
‘So you and your dad ran the business?’ he says.
I explain exactly how things worked, and he nods and makes occasional notes. The more I talk, the more at ease I become and the more I feel like James is actually listening to me. He asks a few more questions and I’m able to answer them, and then he shuffles through the papers again.
‘My husband thinks we might be better off selling the car and using the money for other stuff,’ I say. ‘I’m trying to decide if he’s right.’
‘It’s two completely different things,’ says James. ‘On the one hand you’re talking about continuing a going concern. On the other you’re winding it up and selling its major asset.’
He talks to me as though I’m a knowledgeable business person myself, and even though I have to ask him to explain some of the more complicated issues in greater detail, I’m able to follow his line of thought. And he’s right, of course. Running the business would be a long-term venture. Selling the car is a one-off transaction.
‘In the end, it’s entirely up to you,’ he says after we’ve gone through the numbers. ‘I can’t advise you on what’s best for you and your family. Only on whether the business can continue to be run profitably.’
I nod.
‘You have some good clients and good contacts,’ he tells me as he skims through the list again. ‘Grady PR is a great outfit, and so is Hegarty Construction.’ Grady is Melisse’s firm. Hegarty Construction is owned by a man who grew up near Dad and made a fortune in the Celtic Tiger years.
‘And you’ve got excellent business connections,’ he adds. ‘Which gives you almost daily access to a wide range of clients.’
He’s right about that. I turned down four jobs so that I could be at today’s meeting.
‘Can it be run profitably?’ I ask.
‘It’s bringing in a good annual income,’ says James. ‘You have to decide if you can continue to work the necessary hours to sustain it, and accept that the car will depreciate over time, but there’s no reason it can’t continue to make money. Of course, selling the car would be a nice short-term bonus for you.’
I don’t want to get rid of it, that’s for sure. But I truly do understand why Dave thinks it’s a bonkers idea for me to keep working. Because looking at the figures and calculating the amount of work I’d have to do, it is.
‘Obviously if you decide to stick with it, there’s some paperwork that will need to be dealt with,’ James tells me. ‘I can look after that for you at a reduced fee.’
‘How much would that be?’ I ask. I also ask about changing the company’s name, although I don’t have a new one yet.
He does a quick calculation and mentions an amount that makes me wonder what on earth the non-reduced fee would be. They’ve got it made,
I think, these people who sit in their glass offices and don’t do anything other than move paper from one side of a desk to the other.
‘Obviously I’m not charging you for today,’ says James. ‘Our discussion was a favour to Alison. But if you want to continue with it, getting the paperwork straight will include some legal charges; that’s what pushes it up.’
Did he see it in my face?
‘That’s OK,’ I tell him.
‘You don’t have to decide here and now,’ he says. ‘You should think about it. Talk it over with your husband.’
Is he saying that because he thinks Dave is the one calling the shots? Or that he’d have a better idea about it than me? Or . . . I pull myself up. It’s probably because I mentioned that Dave was concerned about how we’d manage.
‘It was good to talk to you,’ he says. ‘If you decide to stick with it, I’m very confident you’ll be successful.’
I’m surprisingly overcome by his support and have to blink away the tears that are prickling my eyes. I hope he doesn’t notice. I’m pretty sure successful business people don’t routinely cry in their flashy offices.
‘Alison asked me to tell her when we were finished,’ he says. ‘I’ll call her now.’
He picks up his phone and dials a number. I hear Alison’s voice asking him to bring me to her. We leave the meeting room and go up another floor. This time he leads me to an office at the end of the corridor. Alison’s name is on the door. Before he has time to knock, she opens it and beams at me. She thanks James for looking after me, and he leaves us to it.
‘How did it go?’ she asks as she ushers me to a leather chair.
‘Eye-opening.’ I sit down. ‘Jeez, Alison, I never imagined you worked in a place like this. That you had an office with your name on it. That you were so . . . so important.’
‘I’m not that important,’ she says dismissively.
‘But you are!’ I cry. ‘When James talked about you, he talked with respect. Do you work with him a lot?’
‘I’m his boss,’ she admits.
I look at my friend in astonishment. I knew that Alison liked her job and had done well, but I never quite realised before exactly how well. She spoke about getting promoted and moving departments, but I didn’t imagine her as someone who could be senior to the kind of man I’d drive in my car. Which makes her someone who could hire me and my car. Why didn’t I ever think she could be . . . well . . . so successful?
‘It’s all relative,’ she says.
‘Alison King! You have a big office in an amazing building. You’re senior to a man giving me professional advice. And . . .’ I look her up and down, ‘you’re wearing a very expensive suit that I’ve never seen before.’
‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t wear this on a girls’ night out.’ She grins. ‘Far too corporate. But you have to dress well for the office.’
‘I can see that. What I didn’t get until now is how brilliant you are.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she says.
‘I’m stating a fact. And I might be too thick to have realised before now that you’re mega-successful, but everyone else must know.’
‘Success depends on your point of view, Roxy.’
Debs said that to me too. But Debs works in B&Q, not an impressive place like this.
‘From any point of view you’re doing great,’ I tell her. ‘Who wouldn’t think so, for heaven’s sake?’
‘My mother, for one.’ She makes a face. ‘All Mum wants is for me to be married and settled down and to give her a grandchild.’
‘She has about eight grandchildren already,’ I remind her.
Alison has four brothers, all married with families of their own.
‘It’s not the same as far as Mum is concerned,’ says Alison. ‘She thinks it’s more important for me than for the boys.’
‘That’s mental.’
‘That’s Mum.’
We both laugh. I like Alison’s mum, who used to allow all the kids in the neighbourhood to play in her garden and would treat us to lemonade and ice creams during the summer. But her thinking is very old-fashioned.
‘She believes I’m not fulfilling my role as a woman,’ adds Alison.
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. Until the day I’m married and pregnant, she’ll never think of me as a success.’
‘I’m sure you’re—’
‘I’m not.’ Alison’s tone is grim. ‘When I told her last year that I had some great news, she wanted to know if I was pregnant at last. She couldn’t have cared less about my promotion.’
‘Just as well you weren’t pregnant!’
Alison was living with her boyfriend of two years, Peter Brandon, back then. They’ve since split up.
‘She probably wouldn’t have minded. I might have been without a father for my child, but at least I’d have had one.’
‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Ally.’
‘I’m not.’ Alison sighs. ‘Sometimes it seems as though women haven’t made any progress at all over the last fifty years. We talk the good talk, but as long as our mothers still want us to be mothers too, we’re not seen as people who are allowed to make choices.’
‘Your mum must be very proud of you,’ I say.
‘She is. But she’d like to be proud of me for different reasons. However . . .’ Alison smiles. ‘I’m a director of a company with two hundred employees, and I’m pretty proud of myself, which is the most important thing.’
‘Two hundred!’ I gasp. ‘You have two hundred people working for you?’
‘Not all for me,’ she replies. ‘My department has fifty.’
I’m awestruck all over again.
‘I wish you’d said before,’ I tell her.
‘What would I have said? Hey, girls, look at me, I have fifty people working for me?’
‘Um . . . yes,’ I say. ‘I drive men around in my car all the time and they never shut up about how great they are. Or the deals they’ve done. Or how much they’d like to put the knife into someone else.’
‘Oh really? Tell me more.’
I suddenly remember Dad’s words.
‘What happens in the car stays in the car,’ I say. ‘But believe me, it’s a war zone sometimes.’
She laughs again and then asks what I’m going to do about Christy’s Chauffeurs.
‘I thought of myself as a bit of a businesswoman before I came in here,’ I say. ‘Now . . .’
‘You are a businesswoman.’ Suddenly her tone is serious and she’s morphed into the kind of person who could definitely have fifty people working for her. ‘I looked at those spreadsheets too, Roxy. You’re good at what you do.’
‘It was mostly Dad,’ I say. ‘I can’t be sure that I’ll have the same level of business as him.’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’
Because of Dave, I think, but don’t say. Because of Dave and Mica and Tom.
‘How are things at home?’ she asks when she realises I’ve stayed silent. ‘How’s Dave?’
‘OK,’ I reply. ‘We’re getting on pretty well. But as far as this goes, he’d rather sell the Merc and take the money.’
‘But you’d like to drive?’
I think about it again for a moment. Just to be one hundred per cent sure.
‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘Then you should do it,’ says my successful businesswoman friend.
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Nothing is easy.’
I look around her fabulous office with its huge windows and panoramic views of the city. I guess I always thought that me and the girls – the Abbeywood Girls, as we used to call ourselves – all had more or less the same kind of lives. I know Alison is the unmarried one, but I didn’t think things were all that different for her. And yet they are.
‘Was this hard for you?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, for all the reasons you’ve already mentioned.’ She shrugs. ‘The egos. The deals. The ba
ck-stabbing.’
‘Have you been stabbed in the back?’
‘Countless times.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. But I get up and carry on,’ she says. ‘And I don’t let it upset me.’
‘You’re as hard as nails.’ When we were small, though, she wasn’t. She used to cry when we teased her about the freckles dotted across her nose, or the fact that she was hopeless at sports, or that she was the only one of us never to get a Valentine card. Even though she insisted that Valentine’s Day was a stupid con.
‘You toughened me up,’ she says when I remind her.
‘We were bitches.’
‘Ah, no.’ She reaches out and gives me a hug. ‘We were friends. And we still are.’ She pauses for a moment, then gives me a considering look. ‘We run workshops for business start-ups,’ she says. ‘There’s one very soon. Next week, I think. You should come. I’ll check the exact date.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ I protest. ‘Driving Dad’s car isn’t a proper business.’
‘Of course it is,’ says Alison. ‘And it’s not your dad’s car any more. It’s yours. You owe it to yourself to be the best you can be.’
I stare at her, in her corporate suit, in her corporate office. A successful businesswoman. The best she can be.
And I agree to go on the course.
I’m feeling strong and proud and successful businesswoman-y myself as I drive to Mum’s. She’s looking after Mica and Tom again, but when I arrive, she tells me they’re in the Slevin house, a few doors down, watching movies with some friends.
‘How did you get on?’ she asks as she makes space for me at the kitchen table, which is still swamped with little purple octopussies.
‘Are you ever going to bring those into the hospital?’ I ask instead of answering.
‘I was going to go in today, but I’ll go tomorrow instead,’ she replies.
‘Sorry I’ve messed up your plans.’
‘It doesn’t matter what day I go,’ she tells me. ‘I’m not on an octopus deadline or anything.’
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