by Melissa Hill
Karen nodded smugly, folding her arms across her chest. “I told you, didn’t I? They seem completely besotted with one another.”
“But that’s terrific,” Tessa said. “It means that she’s finally over Roan, doesn’t it? Lucky thing – Mike’s an absolute pet too. I have to admit, I didn’t really believe it when you said she was back to herself.”
“Did you notice how she hasn’t stopped grinning since she walked in the door?” Karen was struggling with the bottle-opener.
“Who hasn’t stopped grinning?” Jenny asked, entering the kitchen behind them.
“You – and the delicious Mr Kennedy.” Karen handed her a newly opened bottle of wine. “Get another glass from the cupboard and sit down here for a minute. Tessa’s dying to know all the gossip.”
“There’s no gossip,” Jenny said, bashful. “We’re just – friends, that’s all.”
“You lying madam.” Tessa said. “I’ve seen the looks the two of you are giving one another. Don’t give me that ‘just friends’ rubbish.”
“Honestly – that’s all it is. He’s good fun, and I really enjoy spending time with him, but I’m not interested in Mike that way.”
“Not interested … are you half-cracked, girl. What’s not to like, for goodness sake? He’s gorgeous.”
“It’s just not like that between us, though. It’s just a friendship thing.”
“Are you sure that he feels the same way?” Karen asked. “Because it looks to me as though he’s more than a little interested in you.”
Jenny shook her head. “Definitely not. We get on very well, but that’s it. He’s still in love with Rebecca – that’s his wife – well, his ex-wife now. I think that’s why we get on so well – there’s no expectation, no pressure, nothing like that.”
“And how do you feel about Roan now?” Tessa asked.
“To be honest, I’ve hardly even thought about him in the last few weeks – don’t look at me like that – I mean it.” she said with a grin. “Thinking back over it now, Roan was completely wrong for me, and I’m finally beginning to realise that.”
“Well, I think it’s brilliant,” Tessa said, patting her on the shoulder. “It can’t have been easy for you these last few months.”
“Agreed,” Karen said. “Fair play to you – true to form, you’re never without a good-looking man for long.”
Jenny’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Haven’t you listened to a word I said, Karen? It’s not like that with Mike.”
“Alright, we believe you,” Tessa said, sardonically.
Karen raised her wine glass. “Girls, I think a toast is in order.”
“To what?” Jenny asked.
“To us,” she declared, “firstly to Tessa, the new Mrs Burke.”
The three girls clinked glasses.
“And to Jenny, and her new Mr Wonderful!”
Jenny smiled as they clinked again. She and Tessa were left with their glasses still in mid-air, when Karen had already taken a large gulp from her own.
“What about you?” Jenny asked in surprise, expecting Karen to toast her own forthcoming nuptials.
“Yes,” Karen said, looking decidedly glum, as she set her glass down firmly on the table, “what about me, indeed?”
Chapter 29
Jenny studied the list of names on the report that Marion had given her earlier. The report listed personal accounts that were in excess of permitted overdraft limits, and Jenny shuddered when she realised that most of these customers had had their limits authorised by none other than herself.
Great, she thought. A stack of ‘Account Overdrawn’ letters to be dictated, as well as everything else she had to do today. She’d have to get tough on some of these guys, she thought, grimacing, as she looked through the list again. It wasn’t the first time that these names had appeared on that report.
Jenny jumped as her extension buzzed.
“Jenny – line two.”
“Thanks Jackie, who is –?” She broke off, realising the receptionist had already hung up. She shook her head as she picked up the receiver. The girl was so abrupt. She would never dream of letting Jenny know who her caller might be. Knowing Jackie, this call might not even be for her.
“Hello, Jenny Hamilton speaking,” she said pleasantly.
A highly agitated voice came on the other end of the line. “I’d like someone there to please explain why my credit card was declined in Brown Thomas just now. I’ve been a customer of your bank for nearly thirty years, and I’m just not prepared to stand for this kind of carry-on. I was with my neighbour, and honestly – I’ve never been so embarrassed in front of anyone … ”
Jenny grimaced, as the customer continued. She had been correct – the call shouldn’t have been put through to her at all. Card authorisation was a matter for Credit Card Services, and Jackie should have referred the customer to them. She had no choice but to interrupt the woman in mid-flow. “I’m very sorry, madam – you’ve been put through to the wrong person – can you hold for a moment, please?”
“Hold? Hold? I’ve been holding for the past ten minutes.” The woman’s already high-pitched voice threatened to become hysterical. “Now, you listen to me, young lady, I will not be fobbed off by you, and foisted onto somebody else, who doesn’t know what they’re doing. I want you to phone Brown Thomas right now, to explain the situation, and I want a very apologetic letter, signed personally by the bank manager, sent out to me before the end of the day. It’s absolutely disgraceful. Maybe I was slightly overdrawn but ….”
Jenny groaned inwardly as the woman droned on. From the sound of things, she’d have to try and sort the matter out here and now – the woman would be threatening to sue the bank soon. A quick call to Card Services soon established that the caller was considerably more than ‘slightly overdrawn’ and incidentally wasn’t even a customer of Jenny’s branch. After listening to a rant about bank policy, and how ‘the dogs on the street can get credit these days,’ Jenny finally managed to pacify the caller, with assurances that she would have the bank ‘re-evaluate her credit requirements’.
She groaned as she put the phone down. Honestly. She’d have to get Marion to have a word with Jackie. Goodness knows where her own calls were ending up. Seconds later, her extension buzzed again.
“Jenny, line three was holding for ages. He couldn’t wait any longer for you, so I had to take a number in the end – can you phone him back?”
Jenny resisted the urge to tell Jackie where to go, but decided against it. There was just no point. As Jackie passed on the caller’s number, she instantly recognised it as Mike’s private line at InTech. He picked up after the second ring, and Jenny felt a flood of warmth rush through her, at the sound of his voice.
“Hi, Mike – it’s me,” she said.
“Hey – it’s about time.” Jenny knew that he was smiling as he spoke. “I thought you were going to keep me on hold forever, back there.”
“Sorry – not my fault,” she said, settling back in her chair, ready for a bit of chat, “Jackie Super-Switch strikes again.”
He laughed. “I thought that might have been it.” He had heard her tales of woe about the bank’s receptionist before. “What did you end up with?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said dryly. “Anyway, what’s up? Are you just ringing for a chat, or does the high-and-mighty director of Ireland’s most dynamic software company have a cash-flow problem?”
“Ha – very funny. But that may very well be the case after today. Listen, I can’t talk long, but I need to ask you a favour.”
“Fire away.” As she listened, Jenny began to doodle on a pad of yellow post-it notes.
“I’m going to view some houses in Blackrock this evening, and I wondered if you’d come out and have a look at them with me – tell me what you think.”
Since moving to Ireland after the divorce Mike was living in what he called his ‘bachelor pad’ – a rented duplex in Shankill. He was anxious to move closer to the cit
y, and to the company offices, which were located in the Sandyford Industrial Estate. With house prices rising at an alarming rate throughout the country, but especially so in Dublin, and with the growing success of the company, Mike felt that it was time for him to buy a place of his own. So far, he had seen houses around Cabinteely and Dun Laoghaire, but Jenny knew he was especially interested in Blackrock for its proximity to the city and the InTech offices.
“Great – I’d love to see how the other half live,” Jenny teased, Blackrock being one of the more upmarket Dublin suburbs. “I’ll be finished here around five – what time will I meet you?”
“Why don’t I pick you up after work, and we’ll go straight from there? We can go for a bite to eat somewhere afterwards. Unless you want to go back to the apartment beforehand?”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll see you outside later then.”
“Great.” Mike was pleased. “You know how much I value your exquisite taste, and valued opinion, Jennifer,” he went on, affecting a haughty South County Dublin accent which, Jenny thought, sounded totally at odds with his down to earth personality, and his northside upbringing.
“Alright, alright – save it for later,” she said, laughing as she put the phone down, already looking forward to their outing. After a day like this one, she thought, eyeing the stack of files on her desk that needed attention, she could do with some fun. And Mike was always great fun. Jenny picked up a file and switched on her Dictaphone, about to dictate the first of many ‘Overdrawn Account’ letters she needed to get out in the post today.
A little after five, Jenny exited the branch, and looked up and down the street. She smiled, as she caught sight of Mike’s car across the road, a few cars down. It never failed to amuse her that Mike drove one of those tiny Smart cars, when he could easily afford an Audi, or a Mercedes. But, she thought, smiling as he waved across to her, that was pure Mike. He had told her that he had no interest in owning a huge car for the sake of it, and that he only needed ‘enough room for himself and his laptop’. Jenny wondered idly, if he would apply the same criteria to buying a house.
She opened the car door, the scent of his aftershave assaulting her nostrils as she sat in.
“Phew. Do you have a date tonight, or something?” she teased, settling herself in the passenger seat. “What’s the story with the full bottle of Brut?”
“Do you not like it?” He feigned a hurt look. “Your woman in Arnotts told me that I’d have them falling at my feet, wearing this stuff. But it’s not Brut – I can’t remember the name on the bottle, but it’s called after some fella called Packie.”
“Keeling over with the fumes maybe,” she said laughing, “and I think you mean Paco Rabanne?”
“Hmmm. Never trust a woman pointing a tester-bottle at you,” he said, pulling out into the traffic.
“Where are these houses, then?” Jenny asked, straining to get an idea of the length of traffic ahead of them. “You said Blackrock, but you didn’t say where, exactly.”
“The estate agent is showing us two houses – one on Newtownpark Avenue, and another close to the seafront.”
“The one on Newtownpark Avenue would be handy for the office,” said Jenny, who was familiar with the area.
“True – but the one on the seafront sounds lovely. I had a look at it on the internet, and I kind of fell in love with it.”
“But you haven’t even seen inside the house. It could be an awful kip.”
“Which is why I’m bringing you along,” he said simply. “I need you to keep me on the straight and narrow. I’m going to pretend that you’re my missus, so that if I get too excited about either of them, you can pretend that you’re not that interested. That way, the estate agent might haggle with me over the price. Otherwise, he’d probably convince me to sign there-and-then, and I couldn’t trust myself not to. I’m useless when it comes to things like that. Rebecca ended up negotiating the sale of our house in England that time – I’d have taken the first offer we got for it.”
“Mike Kennedy. I don’t believe a word of it. The likes of you could buy and sell for Ireland, and you don’t trust yourself to say no to a pushy estate agent.”
“I’m not joking – it’s true. I’m useless at that kind of thing,” he said, turning onto the Rock Road. “I fold completely under pressure. That’s why I have Frank to look after the Sales and Marketing at InTech. I can design software for anything, but when it comes to promoting and selling it, I’m no good. Frank won’t let me in the room when he’s trying to negotiate a decent contract for us.”
Jenny nodded, realising that he was actually serious. Who’d have thought it? Mike wanted her as backup, in case the estate agents railroaded him. “You take the job too personally – because you’re so close to it all, I suppose.”
“Exactly. Bet you never had me pegged as the emotional type, huh?”
“Nope – I always suspected you were a big baby, getting so upset over your precious suit being ruined.”
He feigned an outraged expression. “You cheeky little brat. I have a good mind to turf you out on the road here and now, and get some other leggy blonde to come out here with me.”
“Thanks – I’ve never been called a leggy blonde before,” Jenny flicked her hair exaggeratedly, and grinned across at him.
“It was supposed to be an insult,” he said, hitting the steering wheel in feigned frustration.
They eventually pulled up in front of a two-storey, red-brick house with a big ‘For Sale’ sign posted outside it.
“Is this it?” Jenny asked, getting out of the car. On first impression, the house didn’t look too appealing. The garden was overgrown and weeds ran along the edge of a broken path. It obviously hadn’t been attended to in years, and it reminded Jenny of the houses in Rathmines converted into flats, the landlord’s priority being only the collection of his rent each week.
A few minutes later, the estate agent confirmed her suspicions, by revealing to Mike that this was exactly the case. The house had been partitioned into four small studios, and the landlord had fallen behind on the upkeep. There hadn’t been much effort put into it for quite some time but, he exclaimed eagerly, it had ‘lots of potential’.
Potential for a wrecking-ball maybe, Jenny thought privately, taking in the patches of mildew along the dirty grey skirting, and walls the colour of diarrhoea in the kitchen. The place would need years of work to make it anyway liveable. The windows were full of dry-rot, and the partition walls would have to be torn down. She couldn’t see why anyone would want the hassle, irrespective of the price. Mike was looking for somewhere to live, after all, not a lifelong hobby.
It seemed that Mike was equally unimpressed with the place, and after visiting the second house in Blackrock with same estate agent; he was no further forward in his quest for a new home.
“So much for my impressions from the internet,” he grimaced.
Afterwards, both ravenous, they went to dinner in Stillorgan.
“So what do you think?” Mike asked, after ordering the biggest steak he could find in the menu.
“Mmm – I don’t think I could manage a sixteen-ounce. I think I’ll just have the pork instead,” Jenny said, handing her menu to the waiter and relaxing in her seat.
“Not the food, you dope, I meant the houses – what did you think of the houses?”
Jenny gave a shrug of her shoulders. “I wasn’t impressed with either, to be honest.” She smiled at a waiter who had brought a glass of wine for her, and a bottle of Budweiser for Mike. “They both needed a lot of work – considering the asking price.”
She had nearly fainted with shock when Mike had told her the guide price for the first house. It made Jenny wonder how on earth he could manage paying out what would undoubtedly be a huge mortgage repayment each month. Then again, with his money, and a successful company behind him, Mike probably wouldn’t have any worries about something like that.
“I know what you mean,” he said grimacing, “the living-ro
om in the second one looked like something out of a bad sixties porn movie.” He laughed as Jenny raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, though – I don’t want to buy something that needs a lot of work because I don’t have the time, or more importantly, the inclination, for tearing down fireplaces and repainting walls.” He traced a finger along his beer bottle, catching droplets of condensation as they fell.
“Isn’t there anything you’ve seen so far that you like?”
He shook his head. “Nope – not so far, anyway. They’re all either much too big or much too small.”
“Nothing that’s ‘just right’?” Jenny teased. “I thought I was the only Goldilocks around here.”
“Hey. You watch your cheek or you’ll be paying for your own porridge this evening,” he said, shaking a fork at her.
“Oh, I promise I’ll be good, Daddy Bear,” she countered, suddenly realising that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. In fact, Jenny thought, it was difficult not to enjoy being with Mike. Whenever they met up, which she admitted had been quite a bit lately, there was always something to talk about, and more often than not, something to laugh about. She pushed her salad around the plate, trying in vain to pick up pieces of shredded lettuce.
“Any plans for the weekend?” he asked nonchalantly.
Mouth full of salad, Jenny shook her head. “No, actually. I had been thinking of going home to Kilkenny for a visit, but Mum and Dad are away on trip, and my younger brothers want the house to themselves.” She rolled her eyes. “They’re probably planning some mad party, and wouldn’t want boring big sister cramping their style.”
“Well, if you’re not doing anything else –” Before he got a chance to finish, Mike’s mobile phone began ringing loudly. Conscious of the disapproving stares he was getting from other diners, he answered on the second ring. “Hello? Oh, hi, Becky,” he said easily, a smile breaking across his face as he realised who was on the other end.
Jenny’s stomach did a little flip. Becky? She had known that they were still on good terms, but not that good. Mike seemed delighted with the call from his ex-wife. She made a great show of playing with her food, trying not to listen as Mike laughed heartily at something Rebecca was saying.