“Don’t you start crying or that’ll be me gone, as well. Anyway, I should thank you. For coming all this way. And for the beautiful present. I’ll think of you as I lie there covered in mud.”
Eva laughed. She’d given Lainey a thank-you gift of a full day in one of Melbourne’s beauty spas—luxury massages and facials from dawn to dusk. “And thank you for letting me look after Rex. For that shock treatment of my cat phobia.”
“Oh, my pleasure. I know exactly what you got up to with him, by the way. I had security cameras on you the whole time. Now go, will you? Before I start bawling and have to go into work with mascara everywhere, not good for my image at all. Ring me, won’t you? E-mail me. Write to me. About everything, okay? Especially Joe.”
“As long as you don’t start telling me what to do.”
Lainey looked outraged. “Me? Tell anyone what to do? Of course not.”
“And you’ll tell Greg I’m sorry about the Niamh business, won’t you?”
“Oh, I will indeed.”
Two hours later, Lainey was in her office at work with a big pot of coffee beside her. She stretched her legs out under the desk and wriggled her feet. Poor Eva, she thought, twenty-two hours stuck in a plane. The sooner someone invented instantaneous travel, the better. You could already send e-mails around the world in an instant. Surely humans were the next step?
She looked down at her in-tray, still piled high with paperwork that had come in while she was in Brisbane. She had masses of work to catch up on. Phone calls to make, files to read, events to plan…
But all of that would just have to wait. She wanted to do a bit of searching on the Internet first. A bit of searching about a company called Wheeler Design. She pressed several keys and waited as her computer screen blinked into life. Moments later she was connected to the web.
She’d start with the most obvious details, she decided, and then whittle it down from there. There could be lots of companies with the words Wheeler and Design in their titles, not just in London but all over the world.
She keyed several words into the search subject area and pressed enter. There it was, just like that, seconds later. The Wheeler Design website address.
She clicked on it and was connected to the site in seconds. Lainey took a sip of coffee, running her eye over the home page. She put down her cup. Leaned forward. There it all was. In black and white. And color. And moving pictures. Background information on the company. Client testimonials. Newspaper and magazine articles. And a very detailed biography and close-up photograph of its managing director.
Joseph Wheeler. Also known as Joe.
Lainey clicked the mouse button and enlarged the photograph. Yes. It was definitely him.
“Well, well, well,” she said under her breath. “Well, well, bloody well.” He certainly wasn’t a drug smuggler, she’d determined that at least. But look what he was instead. A very successful businessman. An award-winning designer. A company director. Who for some unknown reason had been masquerading as an impoverished backpacker in Australia.
Lainey couldn’t help it. She started to laugh out loud, shaking her head slowly from side to side, speaking under her breath. “She’s not what he thinks she is. And he’s not what she thinks he is.”
She threw back her head and laughed again. “They’re made for each other!”
As Eva walked the long corridor at Heathrow to her Dublin connecting flight, she made some important decisions. She’d done plenty of thinking during the long economy-class flight home. She’d been almost glad she hadn’t been upgraded again. It was time she started living her real life, after all.
She was going to tell her parents and Ambrose the real reason she hadn’t gone back to art school four years ago. Tell them how sorry she was that she hadn’t told them the whole story before now. And tell them how determined she was to make a success of the delicatessen and cafe. She was going to ring Jillian, the manager of the cover band she used to sing with, to see if maybe it wasn’t too late to start singing again, even just as a fill-in, now and again. She’d make time for it somehow.
Her parents were going to collect her from the airport. They’d said they were really looking forward to hearing all about her trip. They’d be hearing more than they expected, she thought. Then, after they left, she was going to ring Joe. And if things were still all right with his grandmother and he sounded like he could take some more bad news, she was going to tell him the truth as well.
“You knew? All this time?”
Her mother nodded. Eva looked at her father, sitting opposite her in her living room in Stoneybatter. “You knew too?”
He nodded as well.
“Since when?”
“Since about a month after you left art school.”
“How did you find out?”
“Do you remember the woman who took you for a coffee?” her mother asked. “At that gallery? I went to school with her. When you told her your name and said you were from Dunshaughlin, it rang some bells. But it wasn’t until after you’d gone that she wondered if you and I were connected.”
Eva shut her eyes. Could you do anything in Ireland without someone noticing? Apparently not.
“She rang here to see if she’d been right and to ask after you. I guess she thought we’d know all about it, about you deciding to leave art school and what the gallery owners had said to you. But you hadn’t mentioned it. We waited to see if you would, and then Sheila died and everything turned upside down for a while.”
Her father took up the story. “We knew for sure that you weren’t going to go back to art school when you went full-time at the shop. And we thought it was such a shame that you were going to miss out on an exhibition, after all those years of study. So we decided to give you one. At home in Dunshaughlin. We still thought your work was wonderful, even if it wasn’t exactly what the galleries wanted.”
“That’s why you had that party?”
They nodded. Eva thought about it again. All the neighbors in the house. Her paintings hung on the walls. The speeches her father and Ambrose had made. Her feeling so guilty, carrying her secret. And all the time her parents had known.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?” She was nearly whispering.
“Why didn’t you tell us you’d decided to leave the art school?”
“I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
Eva’s mother smiled across at her. “Eva, we’ve never been disappointed in you. We love you, whether you work in a shop or in a gallery. Whatever you do.”
Eva was glad of the jetlag. She could blame it for all the confused thoughts tearing around inside her head. She looked at her mother and father. She knew her eyes were filling with tears. She couldn’t help it. A lovely feeling of relief went through her. She felt four years of tension slowly lift away from her shoulders. “I’ve been an eejit, haven’t I?”
They nodded.
An hour later, Eva hung up the phone from talking to Joe and caught sight of her reflection in the window. She wasn’t just an ordinary eejit, she realized. She was the Queen of the Eejits.
She’d spoken to him for more than half an hour. It had been so good to hear his voice, to hear that his grandmother was very well and that his boss was getting on top of the problems at work. But had she told him the truth about herself, as she’d vowed she would? No. And just to make matters worse, she had invited him to come and visit her as soon as he could. In Galway.
Shame you don’t live there, isn’t it? Don’t suppose you could hire a caravan from somewhere? Hire some sculptures? Hire some people to call you Niamh?
She didn’t need that voice to tell her what to do any more. She knew it all herself. She had to ring him back. Tell him again that she would love him to come to Ireland, but this time she’d ask him to fly to Dublin instead of Galway. She’d explain why when she saw him.
She would meet him at the airport. Bring him home here to Stoneybatter. And tell him the truth. Not over the phone—where she couldn’t see his face, c
ouldn’t properly judge his reaction—but face to face. And it would feel wonderful. And he wouldn’t mind at all. She hoped.
She had just reached for the phone when it rang loudly. She nearly leaped out of her skin. “Hello.”
“Evie, it’s me. Lainey.”
She sat down. “Lainey! I’m hardly in the door here—”
Lainey wasn’t in the mood for traveler’s chitchat. She’d been counting down the hours until she knew Eva would be back home in Dublin. She interrupted. “Have you got a pen and paper?”
“Yes,” Eva answered, a little put out.
“I want you to write down this website address. And I want you to go and look at it. Right now. Okay?”
“Okay.” Eva was very puzzled.
Five minutes later, sitting in front of her computer, she wasn’t puzzled any more. She was bewildered. Shocked. Surprised. Joe wasn’t just Joe, not according to this. He was Joseph Wheeler, Managing Director of Wheeler Design.
And Joseph Wheeler was no ordinary designer. He was a very clever, very successful designer, who owned his own very successful company. It was all there. His biography. Photographs. She read everything, studied every picture.
She turned away from the computer and took a deep breath. Oh my God. She felt angry and stupid for being taken in. All this time she’d thought he was just an ordinary person on a backpacking trip around Australia. Dozens of conversations flashed into her mind. Her insisting he take the job at Four Quarters. Asking him about his work. All the things she had said about money being a corrupting influence. And all the time he’d been having her on. Pretending to be someone else.
Eva stopped there. All the time he’d been doing to her exactly what she had been doing to him. And if she was feeling this angry and hoodwinked and stupid, then how was he going to feel when he heard the truth about her? They had lied to each other, that definitely changed things. But there was one big difference. Joe had made himself smaller, made himself less than he was. And she had tried to make herself bigger.
She paced the room. Which was worse? Did knowing all this about Joe make it easier to tell him the truth about her? Or did it make it harder? She didn’t know yet. But she did know two things right now. She was going to make herself a cup of very strong coffee. Then she was going to ring him.
CHAPTER 38
Joseph was just leaving his London flat when the phone rang. “Kate, good timing, you just caught me. I’m on my way into work.”
“On the weekend? Are things still that bad?”
“I know the extent of it all now, at least.” Maurice had been a very busy man, they’d discovered. He’d be up for all sorts of charges if they ever managed to find him.
“I wanted to be sure you’re eating all right, so I’ve cooked some meals for you. Can I drop them over?”
He laughed. “I’m fine. You didn’t have to do that. There’s a Tesco down the road.”
“I wanted to do it. I know I can’t help you with your company business but I can do this.”
“But it’s a long trip in the car for you.”
“I like driving.”
He was touched. “If you’re sure?”
“I am. And you left the spare key for your apartment here, didn’t you? I’ll bring it so you won’t have to wait around for me.”
“That’s good. I don’t know how long I’ll be at work, but I’ll ring and leave a message for you. We can go and have a coffee or something later, perhaps?”
“I’d like that very much.”
Joseph locked his front door, walked down the stairs and out into the street. He was touched by Kate’s gesture. She seemed different since he’d come back from Australia, he thought. Two nights before they had met for a meal. She had needed to talk, to tell him everything. He’d hardly asked her a question, just sat quietly and listened as she told him all she could about that time. He now had a very clear picture of what Allie had been like. And an even clearer understanding of how difficult his death had been for Kate and Lewis. It seemed a lot of things were becoming clearer to him these days.
A gust of icy wind hit him square in the face. The memory of Australia’s sunshine was fading fast. He walked the block to where his car was parked.
As he pulled out from the curb, back in his flat the phone started ringing again. The answering machine clicked into action and the tape started recording.
“Joe, this is Niamh. I must have just missed you. I’ll call back again later.”
Eva hung up the phone. Damn, damn, damn. It wasn’t supposed to work like this. There she was, in full confessional mode and with a million questions to ask him, and he was nowhere to be found.
She roamed around the house for a while. Maybe he’d gone into work. Or to the shops. Or to visit his grandmother. She didn’t know what Joe did on a weekend in London. Yet. But she wanted to. She wanted to know everything about him. And she wanted him to know everything about her.
She had his mobile number, but she didn’t want to have a conversation like this with him while he was walking along the street or driving in his car. She went over to her computer and looked at the Wheeler Design website again. She just couldn’t understand it. He was so successful. He had no reason to pretend, did he? She had a sudden recollection of some of the things she had said to him that night at the taxi rank. She’d been up on her artistic high-horse, pretending to be Niamh the pure artist, talking about art versus commerce, how money corrupted. What must he have thought?
All these questions—she had to get some answers. She had to start somewhere. Tell him the truth about herself. And then? She didn’t know what would happen then.
Perhaps he was at work. He was the managing director, after all. He was the boss, she realized now. The financial problems were his financial problems. And he had the worry of his grandmother too—or did he? She wondered then whether the story about the grandmother was true. Certainly she seemed to have made a miraculous recovery.
She decided to try his work number. Just in case he was there. Steeling herself to hear his voice, she dialed the number for Wheeler Design.
In his office Joseph noticed a light flashing on the telephone console.
Would he pick it up? No, who’d be ringing the office on a weekend? Either a crank caller or a journalist, and he didn’t want to talk to either of them.
He let it go through to the answering machine.
Eva shut her eyes as the Wheeler Design answering message started to play. Should she leave a message on this machine? No, she decided, just as the beep sounded. Not at his work. She replaced the receiver.
She had to do something. Could she leave a message on his home answering machine? Tell him the whole story about herself? At least get the truth ball rolling? She wished she wasn’t feeling so jetlagged. She wasn’t sure if she was actually thinking sensibly. Then she remembered what else she’d done when she hadn’t been thinking sensibly.
She’d taken a spur-of-the-moment train trip. Taken a temporary job at a Melbourne cafe. None of those things had been particularly sensible. But she wouldn’t have changed a thing.
She decided to do it. She’d say everything into his answering machine at home. He could listen to it as many times as he needed to. And then he could decide what he wanted to do next.
She sat down and dialed his home number again and the machine clicked into action. His message played, the tone sounded. She was on.
“Joe. It’s me. Niamh again. I’m sorry, but I think I’m about to use up all your tape. I’ve got a fair bit to say. And I need to say it to you before you come to Ireland. Before we see each other again.”
She crossed her fingers. “Joe, I’ve just seen the Wheeler Design website. I know who you are. I know all about your company. Everything. You’re the boss, aren’t you? And that’s why you had to come back so quickly? I don’t know why you didn’t want to tell the truth about it. I know you must have had your reasons. And I can hardly complain, Joe, because you haven’t heard the truth about me, eit
her. But I think it’s time you did.
“My name’s not Niamh Kennedy, it’s Eva Kennedy. I don’t live in Galway, I live in Dublin. You already know that I didn’t sing with Enya or do a sculpture for U2. I did go to art school but I failed. I work in a delicatessen, Joe. I’m a shop assistant. I can’t really tell you how the whole Niamh-the-sculptor business started. Just as a bit of a joke really between Lainey and me. And then I let it get out of control, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
“I’m sorry to be so cowardly. To just leave the real story on your machine like this. I’ve been trying to tell you the truth since we met but I was worried it would change things between us. And I didn’t want that to happen.”
She paused. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff. Then she jumped. “Joe, I’ve fallen in love with you. That time I spent with you in Australia was the best time I’ve ever had in my life. That’s really blurting it out, isn’t it? And I don’t know where this leaves us now. What you will think. But I hope it’s nothing terrible.” She paused again. “I do have phone numbers. In Dublin. It’s up to you if you want to ring me, after all I’ve just told you.” She slowly gave her numbers, at home and at the shop. “Joe, I won’t call you again but I hope you’ll ring me. Because—” The tape ran out then.
Eva hung up. She felt sick and relieved all at once.
Well done, the voice said.
Kate Wheeler drove around the block again. How on earth did Joseph put up with this? She couldn’t find a parking space anywhere near his flat.
Ten minutes later she finally found one, a block away. It took her three attempts to get into it, then five minutes to lock up her car safely. She was a bit nervous in other parts of London, felt much safer on her own patch. She took the containers of food from the boot of the car. There were enough meals to last Joseph a couple of weeks at least.
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