by Faith Hogan
‘No bad thing, change is as good as a rest,’ the girl said, but she was nice, not like the stylists Claude unleashed on her.
‘I don’t know how it got to that colour, really. I mean, I started out colouring the greys, but the place I used to go to, well, they just seemed to keep deepening the colour, so…’ Amanda picked up a strand between her fingers, winced. It was almost crimson, and a radioactive hue of crimson at that. ‘I want something understated; something that’ll be easy to take care of.’
‘What colour were you? You know, before you let the rainbow fairies at it,’ Sonia asked and they both giggled at that.
‘Well, I was a redhead, a nice redhead – I used to get compliments all the time.’ It was ‘quite striking’, was what Richard had said. ‘Well, it was quite nice.’
‘And do you want to go for something similar again or something a bit more…’ Sonia wiggled her fingers as though she was ready to cast a spell on the disaster before her.
‘I want something that’s appropriate, low-key. I want something that gives me a bit of a break. You know, something that’s classy, but not boring. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Nope. Not at all. We could go for a nice, light brown, colour it all over and then, if you want, I can add in some lighter tones throughout. You’ll look…’ she scrunched up her face for a moment before smiling, ‘normal. No, seriously, it’ll look good. You’ll look good and it won’t take long.’ Sonia looked around the salon. It was a weekday morning and although there was a steady stream of custom, it hadn’t the same frenetic feel to it that Claude actively cranked up so clients always knew he was in demand.
Sonia mixed the colour expertly and Amanda felt herself relax in the faux-leather chair surrounded by the chattering of harried women who were just grabbing what time they could before getting back to busy lives. For an hour or two, the warm sweet-smelling salon and a mug of instant coffee provided a respite, and the fleeting camaraderie was enough to buoy Amanda for her meeting with the girls.
Amanda emerged from the salon looking and feeling better than she’d done in weeks. When her hair was blow-dried she’d applied her make-up, carefully and more subtly than usual. Then she paid a fifth of the price she would have handed over to Claude and headed off to the dreaded coffee morning feeling like Jackie O – without the strand of pearls.
She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the shop windows as she made her way back to the car, the image she saw there was a pleasant surprise. Critically, she could admit, she was hardly a supermodel, but she looked better; maybe even a little bit sophisticated with her new colour and tidied-up hairstyle. She had made an effort, nothing out of the ordinary for the set she was meeting, but compared to what she wore at home these days, she was decidedly glam.
‘Oh,’ Nicola sniffed, ‘you’ve had your hair done.’ She leant a little closer to inspect. ‘So you weren’t brave enough to go for grey after all?’ She smiled smugly at the other women.
‘I still might, just not yet. Anyway, I couldn’t just let it grow out now, could I?’
‘It’s super,’ Clarissa said, ‘more chic than the red.’ She nodded her approval.
‘Anything is better than that badger strip you had last week,’ Megan laughed. ‘Honestly, we thought, next thing you know, Richard would be finding a younger model.’ She glanced at the other two and for a moment, something cut through the silence that fell between them, then she looked back at Amanda. ‘Not of course that Richard would ever do anything like that.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Amanda said as convincingly as she could. She had to front it out. Even if she was going to confront Richard, it would be something that she would never share with this lot.
‘Still off the cake?’ Clarissa asked.
‘Yes,’ Amanda said. Curiously this week, she hadn’t even noticed the tiered plate before her, loaded up with biscuits, banana bread and cherry slices. ‘It’s really made a difference too, I can feel it already,’ Amanda said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. A few weeks ago, she would have been ecstatic at the thought of losing over half a stone in weight, now, well, it was the very last thing on her mind.
The conversation around her had moved on to gardeners. Apparently, you were nobody these days unless you had your garden redesigned and there was only one designer everyone wanted. Of course, Clarissa had him on speed dial. She passed the number along to Amanda, who didn’t remember asking for it, but she smiled when she realised it was Carlos and she put it in her handbag without a word.
She sat back a little in her chair and watched the three women who had been her so-called friends for almost two decades. They were clones, each of them may look different, but they were clones. All of them prayed at the same altar. Was it desperation? Was that why they strived so hard for perfection? Was it fear? Perhaps they feared finding themselves in the situation Amanda had found herself in now.
She took a deep breath. Even the coffee sat precariously in her throat, threatening in its own spiteful way to damn her. This place, the Berkley hotel, they had come here every week for years. Amanda could remember her first time. She’d been completely in awe of it all. This beautiful room and, of course, Clarissa, Nicola and Megan were enough to make anyone catch their breath. Back then, they really were all beautiful, full of life and expectations. Their smiles were genuine then – weren’t they? Maybe they weren’t. Maybe they had always been this bitchy and she just hadn’t noticed because she was on the inside for so long. That thought made her feel disgust, not at them as much as at herself. They had been despicable. Cruel to people who were not faring as well in life as they were; when had she turned into someone who took pleasure in other people’s misfortunes?
God, but she wanted to scream. Suddenly she wanted to call them out, tell them exactly how she saw them. She wanted to rupture their bitch fest and stamp out of here, she wanted to run down that street outside, find her car and drive… Where? Home was not the refuge she had hoped to make it. Since her suspicions began, she felt like an outsider in the beautiful house she’d spent so much of her time getting just right. Now, it was all wrong. Everything about it was wrong. She wanted a home where she could throw her coat over the stair rail, where she could leave her bag on the kitchen worktops without having to put it away immediately. She wanted a home that smelled as if her family lived there. She wanted a home where people sat together, not behind forbidding bedroom doors and beneath inimical headphones. She wanted a house that was a home. Could the house on Swift Square ever be that now? God, she couldn’t answer that and the question as it hung over her carried in it a maelstrom of emotions from fear to regret and from sadness finally to anger.
‘You’re not even listening to us. Honestly, Amanda, you’re in another world, it’s as if you’ve something on your mind and it’s completely cut you off from us?’ Nicola was studying her, and although her mouth was smiling, those shrewd green grey eyes were assessing.
‘No, just one of those things. I’m making biscuits for the Girl Guides and, for the life of me, I can’t remember where I left my shopping list.’ Amanda smiled what she hoped was an endearing smile. They had always seen her as a little ditzy. Over the years, Amanda had become the fat one. She was the one who could tell a joke and got frazzled by the various demands of having a fabulous life, but cake kept her on the straight and narrow.
‘I was just saying,’ Clarissa bent a little closer to the group and Amanda leant forward out of courtesy as much as out of habit, ‘I have it on good authority that this new girl, Arial Wade?’ She looked around at the women who were nodding like wind-up dolls. Amanda nodded automatically too, although she hadn’t a clue who they were on about. ‘Well, apparently, she’s working her way through the trading floor. She’s slept with every junior trader in the place and…’Clarissa smiled coyly, enjoyed having them hang on her next words.
‘Oh, come on, do tell…’ Nicola was practically gagging.
‘Well, it seems that they’re looking at promoting h
er, so she could yet be…’ Clarissa walked her perfectly manicured fingers along the tabletop.
‘No. There’s not a chance that she’s going to swan in from…’ Nicola looked around. ‘Where was she before? Japan, wasn’t it?’ She shrugged, ‘It’s never going to happen, not if she decides to shag Julian Fitzgerald himself. Everyone knows Hugo has…’ she looked across at Amanda, ‘well, either Hugo or Richard are entitled to that job.’ That job was the job. It was the job Richard had set his heart on – the prize they were working towards for most of their married lives. The one that Amanda had always believed he’d pull from under Hugo and Nicola Lennox’s nose. Now, well suddenly, it all seemed so worthless.
‘Nicola, seriously, they haven’t given it to either Richard or Hugo, maybe they are holding it open for someone…’ she was going to say better, ‘newer.’ Amanda smiled with an ease that she never knew she had. ‘After all, what do we need it for anyway? My family is taken care of, we have lovely homes, lovely holidays. If Hugo retired tomorrow morning you’re still set up for life.’ Amanda looked around at the other women who were staring at her now, all but open-mouthed. ‘I mean, truly, quality of life, girls,’ she said and she smiled to herself, sipping her coffee.
‘You don’t mean that,’ Nicola said slyly. ‘You know something we don’t… about this job, have you heard something?’ She was leaning forward so much, Amanda thought she might topple over.
‘Heard something?’ Amanda said innocently. ‘Moi?’ She was enjoying her moment of being the centre of it all, the one who seemed to hold all the cards. It was like a holiday from feeling so crap all the time.
‘We’re your friends, Amanda, come on, you’ve got to spill. You know the curiosity will just kill me if I don’t find out for another week.’
‘Do you think she’ll start shagging the senior traders?’ Megan’s hand flew to cover her mouth, normally she managed to keep her reserve.
‘I’d say she already has,’ Nicola was aloof and Amanda knew that if she didn’t play along, Nicola would be the first to shoot a poison dart in her direction.
‘Look, I don’t know anything about this Arial Wade, but I’m just saying, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? They’re looking for new blood, and maybe she’s it. As a woman, we should be applauding her. I mean, better her to get it than some hotshot hardly out of his dad’s school tie. Do we want someone who relegates everyone else to the scrap heap?’
‘Hmm.’ Nicola was thinking now. ‘Maybe we should meet this Arial Wade?’
‘Warn her off, you mean?’ Megan was chewing on her lower lip and Amanda couldn’t help but feel for her. It was amazing the clarity that arrived with knowing that your worst fears had materialised.
‘No. Nothing as juvenile as that. After all, if she’s made it onto the stockbrokers’ floor, she’s hardly going to be intimidated by a few ladies who lunch,’ Nicola’s laugh was sardonic, cruel almost. Was that all she thought of herself? Amanda wondered. Was it all she thought of any of them? Had they become little more than ‘ladies who lunch’ and supplicate themselves to second place because their husbands were super-earners?
‘Well, I say good luck to her,’ Amanda said with far more conviction than she felt. ‘May the best man win.’ She shivered then, a rattle through her bones as though someone had stepped on her grave, or perhaps they were just laughing at her.
*
Amanda was delighted to sit in the jeep once she left the Berkley. She switched off the radio. Its incessant chatter only added to the frizzle of agitation that the women had brought to her nerves. At the traffic lights, she turned left instead of right, headed for the underground parking close to the Stock Exchange. She hadn’t a plan, just a need to not go home yet. At the same time as she was parking the jeep, she knew she really did not want to run into Richard. She could go shopping, that always worked well to soothe her nerves. After all, most of her clothes were becoming loose on her now; she’d begun digging in the back of the wardrobe for items that she’d saved for one day.
No. Shopping wouldn’t do it for her. Not this time. Shopping didn’t sort out seething anger and that was the emotion that she was feeling now. It came as a bit of a surprise, but today, finally, the shock and fear had begun to subside. Now she was angry. Furious with herself for feeling so weak and vulnerable and for becoming what once she would have despised. When did that happen? Had she always been such a wishy-washy wife? She had spent the last few weeks in mortal fear that Richard’s affair would tear her world down. Now she was beginning to see that the world she thought was so pristine was far from being as perfect as she had believed. Today, with this unfamiliar anger searing through her, she realised, that tearing down the lot might be the best thing for her. At least then she could be free to take on the world on her own terms. At least then she wouldn’t have to pretend, because that was what her life had become – pretence. It was the same for Nicola, Megan and Clarissa, only they couldn’t see it yet.
Amanda took the exit furthest from the Stock Exchange. She was walking up Crown Alley when a key-shaped sign caught her attention. She’d never noticed it before, but it seemed to be drawing her towards the light green door emblazoned with the words. P Boland, Investigator and Researcher. Serendipity, wasn’t that what they called it when things just seemed to fall into your hands.
The girl at the desk was lovely. A nondescript little thing, but her eyes were quick and she typed as if she was on a death mission. ‘You’re lucky. The twelve o’clock cancelled. If you could take a seat for a minute?’ She made no move to ring through to her boss, but continued to type at breakneck speed for about four minutes. It was just enough time for Amanda to begin to come to her senses.
She was about to pick up her bag and make her apologies for being silly and that she should not have come when the girl got up from her desk and switched on the kettle. She tipped her head to one side and asked, ‘Coffee or tea?’ and Amanda found herself asking for a cup of tea.
The mug was hot and steaming in her hands and somehow it managed to taste a million times better here with this stranger than the coffee she’d just left behind at the five-star Berkley Hotel.
Chapter 25
Forty-eight years earlier…
Sometimes Tess wondered at the blackness of this city as she stared at her reflection in the kitchen window before her. The patch of land outside, that might have been a grand garden once, only paraded the darkness further. Across the city, people picked their way home quickly, the promise of a turf fire and the six o’clock news perhaps enough to salve the inconvenience of the cold December evening.
Tess managed not to cry, instead she bottled it all up. She never spoke of Douglas or how her heart was breaking; how could she say that he had cast her aside because she was not quite good enough. She couldn’t admit that to Nancy, it would make the rejection even worse. She hoped that if she left it just a little longer, he would relent and she would claim the happiness she had first assumed was hers. The letter sat uncomfortably on the kitchen table. Aunt Beatrice had taken a ‘turn’, her mother said. They hadn’t worried, over the years it had become an annual event – Tess could hardly remember a December when she hadn’t. Beatrice had led a band of women in the 1916 rising. She had played her part in the war of independence and later in the great emergency – Ireland’s response to the Second World War. Her father said it was a relief she’d missed out on Cromwell – if, in his dry opinion, only just. Her mother played out all those conversations between the faded blue words in her letter and Tess knew that Beatrice was too tired for another battle.
Their final goodbye was so much less than Tess hoped it might be. Beatrice was unrecognisably shrunken and grey, an incongruous doll-like figurine splayed across starched pillows in the county home. How could she have aged so much in a matter of months? She wanted to believe there was the quiver of a smile upon her lips as Tess spoke of the new life carving out before her. Later, when they sat alone, she told her about Douglas Buckley and how she loved hi
m, and Beatrice had smiled, just a fraction, but enough for Tess to know she heard.
She passed away an hour later and Tess allowed the paraphernalia of death to wash over her. They were shunted from the ward, the priest and doctors, nurses and other patients became a blur of words spent only to fill the awkwardness of loss. There was a pattern, a long-worn path of what people said and did at times like this. Even if her parents were unaccustomed to it, they seemed happy to track along and accept the handshakes and nods that were shorthand for words rhymed off in funeral homes and beneath graveside orations.
‘She would want one of you to live there,’ her mother said quietly as they made their journey home. They sat, all three, in the back of her father’s car – and it struck Tess as odd that her mother chose to leave the seat in front free – their father captaining this sad journey alone.
‘I would love to live in Ballycove,’ Nancy said the words uncertainly. Tess knew Ballycove was where Nancy had always belonged. Nancy was hardly making a huge sacrifice, even if their mother counted it as such. She squeezed Nancy’s hand, a muted message, unpicked by love and fear. Although they sat next to each other, Tess could not meet her eyes, instead she felt her sister’s glance as it bounced nervously about the car – perhaps she had an inkling then that Nancy was about to bring her hopes crashing down upon her.
‘Well, we’ve always known that, Nancy.’ Her father’s voice, pragmatic, reasonable from the front.
‘She wanted me to have it,’ Tess wasn’t sure if she whispered the words, but her mother tutted beside her, so she supposed she’d said something, even if it wasn’t fully heard. Not that she’d ever said she’d live there, in that wild and often lonely spot staring out into the sea – but Beatrice had wanted her there. It was funny, but suddenly, she could imagine Douglas wanting to live there. It made the cottage seem more important, in those few moments; it might be pivotal to her future.