‘I’ll certainly give it my best shot,’ she smiles, taking a sip of Earl Grey tea. She speaks softly, so much so that I almost have to strain to hear her over all the hotel’s chat and clatter in the background.
‘Well, we first met about a year ago.’
‘Eleven months, three weeks and four days to be exact,’ Damien interrupts and she laughs him off.
‘Back then I was working as a model in Paris, you see,’ she tells me, ‘and life was certainly hectic.’
Kate’s selling herself short here of course, because we’re all familiar with just how successful her modelling career has been to date. It’s no exaggeration to say that she’s probably been one of this country’s best-known faces ever since she was first scouted as a teenager on a night out with friends in Dublin.
I ask her a bit about how she first started out modelling and she laughs, claiming she still remembers it vividly.
‘Well there I was, all of seventeen years old, in a restaurant stuffing my face with pizza along with a few girlfriends,’ she says, ‘when next thing this older businessman-in-a-suit type approached our table and asked me for a quick word.’
‘A modelling scout?’ I guess.
‘Turned out that yes, he was. He introduced himself, handed me a business card and made all sorts of wild promises about what would happen if I’d only call the agency he represented.’
‘Now of course Kate is far too modest to say this,’ Damien interrupts, gazing at her fondly. ‘But, in fact, what this guy actually claimed was that his agency could make her a household name in next to no time.’
‘Of course, I giggled about it with my pals afterwards,’ Kate tells me, ‘but I suppose part of me was intrigued by what he’d said, because I did indeed make the call the next day.’
Which as it happened turned out to be one of the more life-changing events in the life of Kate Lee. Within a matter of weeks after that first auspicious meeting, she’d landed not only the top agent in London, but also lucrative catwalk work with Chanel in Paris.
‘It must have been dream come true stuff for you,’ I say, ‘but may I ask, weren’t your family at all worried about you? A young teenager let loose in Paris on her own?’
‘Turned out they were absolutely right to be as well,’ she says with a slight grimace.
‘Because she met someone quite unsuitable over there, didn’t you, darling?’ prompts Damien. ‘Some kind of photographer.’
‘Aurelian,’ says Kate.
‘Yes,’ says Damien. ‘I knew it was quite a girlie-sounding name.’
It’s easy to picture Aurelian as an almost stereotypically Parisian fashion photographer, with a couldn’t-really-care-less, shrug-it-away-and-light-a-Gauloise brand of sexiness. Kate tells me that about two years after they’d met she’d moved over to Paris full-time and not long after, by then virtually a household name with her career flying sky-high, they became engaged.
Which, it seems, is when all the trouble started.
‘You see, the wedding was supposed to take place in Dublin,’ she tells me, while Damien nods along, ‘at my family’s parish church. But, well you see … there was a bit of a glitch.’
‘Yes?’ I ask.
‘The ceremony was just weeks away,’ she goes on, ‘and I flew over to Dublin to take care of some last-minute preparations with my mum. And I’m sorry to say that she and I rowed.’
‘Which actually isn’t such a difficult thing to do if you knew Kate’s mother,’ quips Damien, sotto voce, ‘though of course I know you wouldn’t dream of printing that.’
‘It wasn’t just any old heated disagreement either,’ Kate goes on, ‘this was a full-on humdinger with screeching, yelling, the whole works.’
‘I won’t stand by and watch my only daughter make the biggest mistake of her life with some photographer that we know nothing about!’ says Damien, putting on a high falsetto voice.
Kate doesn’t laugh along though, I notice, instead she quietly tells me that she just turned on her heel, headed straight back to the airport and caught a last-minute flight back to Paris and back to her fiancé Aurelian. Back to their top-floor shared apartment at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the fashionable 6th arrondissement. Back, she’d doubtless hoped, to a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on.
‘Well, I was in for the shock of my life,’ she goes on, describing how she’d burst in through the door, delighted to be home though not for a moment expecting Aurelian to be there. It was late afternoon and she knew for a fact he was due to be out on a fashion shoot at the Tuileries.
Prompted by Damien, she vividly describes throwing her wheelie bag on the hall floor, kicking off her shoes, about to go into the kitchen when, lo and behold, she heard voices coming from the bedroom.
‘Anyway, let’s just say that I discovered my fiancé was being unfaithful to me,’ she says discreetly, trailing off there and leaving the story dangling.
‘No, darling, the press will want a little more colour to the story,’ Damien insists. ‘Tell how you threw the bedroom door open – and well, there they were.’
‘There’s really no need,’ says Kate demurely. ‘I think anyone who reads this will be well able to draw their own conclusions.’
‘Kate was horrified to see Aurelian in bed with another model who she’d worked with and who she knew very slightly,’ says Damien, ignoring the warning hand Kate places on his arm. ‘There they were, tucked up in bed together, sucking on cigarettes with a half-drunk bottle of champagne on the bedside table beside them, just to really hammer the point home. Must have been horrifying for you, you poor girl,’ he adds, stroking her hand.
‘So what happened next?’ I ask, intrigued.
‘Naturally she did what any woman would do,’ says Damien. ‘Got the hell out of there while he yelled all sorts of crap after her, you can only imagine. “Kate! C’est ne signifie rien! Elle ne veut rien dire!” ’
Kate flushes slightly at the embellishment, and steps in to take over the story.
‘What I actually did after that,’ she tells me, ‘was to jump into a cab and ask to go to Charles de Gaulle airport, mainly because I’d nowhere else to go and no one in Paris to turn to; which of course meant going back home, with my tail firmly between my legs.’
‘Can’t have been easy for you,’ I say sympathetically.
‘So Kate’s mother had actually been on the money about Aurelian all along,’ says Damien. ‘You see, darling? Mother knows best. And I’d like to add for the record that her mum and I get along like a house on fire.’
‘The problem was that when I arrived at the Air France ticket desk,’ says Kate, ‘I realised that I had absolutely no money on me. Not a red cent, nothing. Both my credit and debit cards were completely maxed out with pre-wedding buys, so of course they were of no use to me either.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Well I hadn’t a clue where to go and I suppose I was still in utter shock. So I gave up pleading with the ground hostess at the ticket desk, went and found a free seat in the middle of the concourse and instantly burst into tears. Mortifyingly embarrassing sobs too, I’m afraid. I made such a spectacle of myself that people started to notice and look my way.’
And one person in particular, it seems. Because there was a bar just adjacent to where Kate was sobbing her eyes out and as pure chance would have it, there had also been a huge Six Nations rugby game on earlier that day, Ireland versus France. The bar was jam-packed with supporters all in high spirits, laying into the beers and whiling the time away before their return flight home.
‘So there I was with a gang of guys from college,’ says Damien, ‘and we were in fantastic form because Ireland had just done the unthinkable and beaten France 22–10 at the Stade de France that afternoon. As you can imagine, there were more than a few pints of the black stuff involved.’
‘And that’s when you first spotted Kate?’
‘Course I did, like just about every other red-blooded male there. You couldn’t m
iss this knockout beauty bawling her eyes out in the middle of the airport concourse.’
Kate for her part says she barely even took notice of anyone around her, but all of a sudden she was aware of a guy hovering close by and looking worriedly down on her. Tall, classically good-looking, with dark hair and a light tan, dressed in an Irish rugby jersey and with the rugby supporter’s obligatory pint of beer clamped to his hand.
‘So, egged on by the lads, I walked right up to her and came out with probably one of the cheesiest pick-up lines of all time,’ Damien grins.
‘I realise this is probably a stupid question,’ they say together, looking adoringly at one other, ‘but is everything OK?’
It seems that Damien then sat down on a free plastic seat beside her and when Kate looked at him she tells me she had an overwhelming feeling that she could trust this guy. He had soft eyes, for starters, and she shyly confesses that she’s always been a sucker for soft eyes. So she found herself telling him everything. He nodded, and listened to her tale of woe.
‘But he said absolutely nothing.’
‘Instead I just strode over to the ticket desk and paid for her return flight home—’
‘—So of course I insisted that I’d have to reimburse him the minute we got back home, but he was having none of it.’
At this point, the pair of them almost overlap each other in their eagerness to get the story out.
‘Anyway, I invited Kate to join my friends at the bar and they instantly took her under their wing. As you can imagine only too delighted that this stunningly beautiful, leggy blonde model had deigned to join us—’
‘—Damien had even managed to wangle seats on the flight so we were beside each other the whole way home.’
‘And when we’d landed safely—’
‘—Ever the gentleman, he insisted on dropping me right to my parents’ house – and he even managed to charm my mum over a mug of tea—’
‘—Like I always say, get the mother onside and it’s all plain sailing from there!’
But after I’ve switched off my tape recorder, Kate confides what really happened next. Befuddled and still punch-drunk from her emotional roller coaster of a day, it was only when her handsome saviour was leaving that she finally got around to asking him his full name.
‘It’s Damien King,’ he apparently grinned at her. ‘A lovely, warm, open smile too,’ she adds in that soft voice. ‘And I can’t tell you, after the day from hell that I’d just been through, how grateful I was to meet such a gentleman who looked after me and took care of me and who was … just so completely wonderful, really.’
Then came the clincher.
Instead of letting her pay him back for the ticket, Damien apparently insisted that instead she let him take her out to dinner. Only it had to be the following night and that wasn’t negotiable.
‘Before she’d time to change her mind.’
‘And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
TESS
The present
Thursday night, dinner with the Pritchards. Did I tell you about my in-laws to be? Because not many people can say that they’re genuinely fond of the family they’re about to marry into, but I can. Deeply fond of them.
Honestly.
Bernard’s parents, Desmond and Beatrice, are Anglo-Irish and now live in Donnybrook, the posh end of Donnybrook that is, in a once beautiful but now slightly dilapidated Victorian redbrick, surrounded by copper trees and with a banged-up Honda Civic sitting in their driveway on four blocks of cement. Untaxed, uninsured and ignored, much like the house itself.
True, their home could be beautiful if the Pritchards only tidied it up a bit, hoovered and maybe ran a duster over the place every now and then, but then that’s all part and parcel of the Pritchard family charm. And we’ll just skate over the wilderness that’s their front garden, which right now is looking not unlike the set of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! In fact the one time my mother was here, her only comment was, ‘well, we may not live in a house that grand but still, I think I’d rather die of shame than invite guests into my house if it was that filthy. The Pritchards may well act like they’re posher than the Queen, but you’d want to see the state of their downstairs loo.’
You can tell everything you need to know about a person, according to Mum, by just a single glance at their bathroom. I tried in vain to convince her that she was missing the point, because that’s the whole thing about the Pritchards; they seem to live their whole lives in chaotic squalor and it doesn’t bother them in the slightest. It’s all part and parcel of their whole ‘take us as you find us’ vibe.
Beatrice and Desmond, you see, not unlike Bernard himself, could best be classed as ‘eccentric’. In an endearing way though, you can only admire them for all their warm-hearted, unaffected battiness. Desmond is a retired university professor (History of Art and Classics, just like Bernard himself). Meanwhile, his mum, Beatrice, used to work as a senior librarian and is now researching a non-fiction book, in her own words, ‘all about Oliver Cromwell, politics and religion in the English Civil War, 1642–1651. Not your thing at all, my darling’.
In fact, I’ve a recurring nightmare that she invites me to her book club to discuss it and I am only hoping against hope that she doesn’t give me an early copy to read then start grilling me on it.
I pull my car into the Pritchard’s driveway, narrowly avoiding the same pothole that’s been there ever since Bernard and I first started dating. There’s a gentle thud on the roof of my car and I realise that it’s Magic, the family’s jet-black tomcat and officially the unfriendliest animal in the world, who’s just jumped down from the branch of a tree to come and intimidate me.
‘Hi, Magic,’ I say, hopping out of the car and instinctively going to pet him, but he just squeals like I’ve actually done him physical harm and instead leaps up onto the bonnet of my car, tail pointing sharply upwards and hissing. Same as the big eejit does every single time he sees me.
‘Come on, Magic,’ I say soothingly, reaching out to placate him. ‘Can’t you and me be pals?’
He responds with a cross between a yell and a squawk that’s so loud, next thing Beatrice is at the front door, still in her dressing gown and with a towel wrapped around her head. Almost as though I’ve arrived hours early for dinner and caught her off-guard, whereas actually I’m bang on time.
‘What’s that God-awful racket? Oh it’s you, Tess dear, how lovely to see you. Now, Magic, shut up you silly puss, Tess is our guest and you’d better play nice.’ Then she kisses me lightly and gratefully takes the bottle of wine I hand over.
I think it’s worthy of note that it’s only half six and as she air-kisses me, I can’t help noticing that Beatrice already has a whiff of one G&T too many wafting from her. But then that’s the Pritchards for you. No exaggeration, but in this house they generally start Happy Hour at mid-afternoon and keep on drinking till it’s last man standing.
‘Oh and just ignore Magic; I know we all do. The idiotic animal actually thinks he’s a guard dog – do you know he’ll only eat Pedigree Chum? And he’ll only sleep outside in a little kennel that Bernard had to have made especially for him. Such a noodle.’
‘He’s … erm … certainly a little character alright,’ I smile.
‘And you’ve brought a little bottle of vino, how thoughtful of you. Come in and have an aperitif, Bernard’s already here ahead of you. He’s really so excited about the wedding now – as are we all. Not long to go now!’
I follow her inside to the gloom of their hallway, thinking that it’s probably just as well that the entire house seems to get next to no natural light whatsoever; at least this way you’re less likely to notice the thick layers of dust and cobwebs that coat just about every surface and square inch of the place.
I know my mother would flush scarlet in the face if anyone saw our house in this state, but that’s the thing about the Pritchards, not only do they not care, I think they barely seem to even notice h
alf the time.
Even if there are times when it does go just a tiny bit too far. On my very first visit here, Bernard and I were making small talk with the parents in the drawing room when Magic dragged in a dead mouse that he’d half-masticated and dumped it right at Beatrice’s feet. And her reaction? To ignore it like it never happened and pour herself another stiff G&T.
‘Tess, my sausage, is that you?’ says Bernard, coming out of the kitchen with a sherry in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
‘Hello, you,’ I smile up at him as he bends down to give me a peck on the cheek.
‘Had a good day?’ he asks. ‘Everything sorted about that dratted jury summons?’
‘No, but don’t worry, come Monday morning it will be,’ I tell him confidently.
‘Good, good, good,’ he says absently, steering me past a big mound of books scattered all over the hall and on into the kitchen, where Beatrice is cremating what looks like it once started out in life as a rabbit.
Did I tell you about Bernard? Because he’s just lovely and the total opposite of just about every eejit I’d dated right up till he and I met. With one messer in particular very much to the forefront of my mind at the minute, but we’ll just skate over him like he never existed. Mainly because that particular chapter of my life is now buried deep in the back of my mind, padlocked and labelled ‘Do not, on any account, enter’.
Trust me, you don’t want to know.
Anyway, back to Bernard who’s a big man, portly and greying, but with just the loveliest soft brown eyes. Gentle, kind eyes. He’s also a full fifteen years older than me. He just turned forty-three last year and before he and I met, he quite literally hadn’t dated since he was in college. And even that relationship petered out after just a few months.
In fact, half of me suspects that’s the primary reason why Desmond and Beatrice were so welcoming to me right from day one. Up until Bernard and I started dating, I think they’d pretty much written off their only son as being neither gay nor straight, but in that grey hinterland in between. You know, a confirmed bachelor. One of those asexual people, who’d just rather have a nice cup of tea than dip a toe into the dating pond, purely to avoid all the emotional messiness involved.
All She Ever Wished For Page 3