Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘This is a big one,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been feeling a little off the last week.’ Nobody was better than Ingrid when it came to saying sorry. She readily admitted her faults. ‘I tried on that red beaded dress I love and it’s too tight. I’m not eating any more than usual, I’m still going to the gym, but despite all that, I still look like I’ve got a big wad of packing around my middle. It’s so depressing,’ she added, more to herself than to him. ‘I’m just fed up with the feeling that I’m falling apart. When I deal with one problem, another bit of me falls apart.’

  Her joints were giving her trouble, he knew that, and her neck was sometimes painful because of a displaced cervical disc. That had been bad lately, which always made her cranky. ‘Everything bulges,’ she said gloomily, and he saw her put her hand up to her neck. ‘And why is it that, without anything I’ve done, the muscles in my neck are taut and the muscles in my belly are flabby? I have a six pack in my neck where I don’t want it. Why can’t you decide where you want the taut bits and have them all nice and loose in your neck and taut in your belly?’

  David laughed then. ‘Ingrid, stop,’ he said. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  She shot him a look filled with a regret that he’d never seen on her face before.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I never thought I was beautiful. I thought I was OK, ordinary; but when I look back at old pictures of me now I see maybe I was a bit beautiful, and I didn’t appreciate it. I had no idea of my beauty or its importance, and now, when its gone, I recognise that I was beautiful, after all, but I was too busy worrying about my looks to appreciate them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said with a sigh, and got out of bed. There was no point trying to rest now.

  Putting on his dressing gown he went downstairs and turned on the sports channel. Moaning about bad backs was one thing, but moaning about getting old was something he hated. He feared ageing. Marcella used to joke that men didn’t get older, they aged well, like fine wine, but she was wrong. Men got old too, and they hated it just as much as women did. If Ingrid, solid, reliable, loyal, wonderful Ingrid, thought she was getting old, then he was too. He didn’t want to get old, there was so much he wanted to do, so much.

  That night, Ingrid didn’t wear the red dress, she wore a silvery one, some sort of silk taffeta thing with a bit of a fishtail that made her look mermaidy. Her hair was all curled tenderly around her neck. She looked as lovely as ever, he thought.

  The awards ceremony was being held in the Mansion House and a car arrived to drive them there.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ said the driver politely to Ingrid. ‘And Mr Fitzgerald.’

  David felt his jaw tighten. He wasn’t Fitzgerald, he was Kenny–Mr Kenny. He wasn’t some appendage of Ingrid’s.

  ‘Relax.’ In the car, he felt Ingrid’s soft hand take his and she whispered to him, ‘Relax, Mr Fitzgerald.’

  She thought it was funny? He stared out the window moodily and wished he wasn’t going.

  At the ceremony, a beautiful girl from the magazine welcomed them and led them to their table. There were place names and they hadn’t been put beside each other.

  The woman to his left was the wife of a famous actor, as famous for his amours as he was for his films. But the wife, who had pretty, slightly glazed eyes, didn’t seem to care. She watched her stunning husband, who was sitting beside Ingrid, flirt with other women at the table and yet seemed content. Perhaps she didn’t mind sharing him, didn’t mind being expected to walk three steps behind. David wouldn’t really have wanted Ingrid to be like that, but the idea was still somehow appealing.

  She perked up, mildly, when she heard that David owned Kenny’s. ‘Oh, I love that place,’ she said. ‘The organic night cream is fabulous. I love it. I’m truly into organic stuff. I was thinking of starting my own line.’

  ‘Really,’ said David absently, watching Ingrid talking to the famous actor as his equal, which was more than the actor’s wife set herself up to be.

  The placement of the people around the table said so much. The guests of stellar importance were seated beside each other, because they were part of a special club. Even if they didn’t know each other, they shared the experiences of being famous. The same problems–having complete strangers come up to them as if they knew them, having fans think they owned them. Of course, the famous actor faced this all over the world, while Ingrid was only known in Ireland, but still, it was similar. David and the actor’s wife, however, were demoted to the appendage or consort department. Suddenly it rankled so badly that he wanted to walk out, just to prove the point. He was an important person in his own right, not Ingrid’s significant other.

  David had been to many events over the years with Ingrid and he’d never felt like this before. Was this part of getting old, too, this dissatisfaction with everything, knowing that when he was gone all that would be left would be Kenny’s? When Ingrid was gone, her name would be on this award, her face would be in photographs on the television station’s wall and all the places where she had made her mark. Her job meant that she could leave some other sort of legacy, whereas his name would more quickly be forgotten.

  Ingrid smiled at him many times across the table, giving him the Are you all right, darling, I’m so sorry we’re sitting apart from each other look he recognised after so many years together. But he was angry with her. He knew it wasn’t her fault, that it was unreasonable, but he was still angry.

  When she went up to accept her award, she spoke strongly about women who had inspired her and talked about her belief in the importance of women being kind to other women, and mentoring them.

  ‘Men do it very successfully. So should we,’ she said.

  Everyone laughed and cheered, and then at the end, she thanked her family and David, without whom none of this would be possible.

  And David, who should have felt happy and proud, still felt bitterly angry. He wished she’d left him out of the speech by mistake. He wanted to be angry with her for something. He didn’t know why, but everything felt wrong and he had no idea what would make it right.

  The following Monday morning, a girl on the perfume counter smiled flirtatiously at David as he walked past. He smiled back. It was a reflex; he smiled at all the staff. But there was something about this girl, Rosemary. She didn’t look like a Rosemary, which seemed to him a gentle, old-fashioned type of name. This girl was anything but old-fashioned. Hot stuff, as his father might have said.

  Andrew Kenny had liked hot stuff, the sort of girls who were the opposite of his own wife. There had been a Brazilian lady once, wife of a Latin American business associate. Chiara, she was called. Up to then, David hadn’t thought of married women having affairs with their husband’s tacit approval, but Chiara changed that. She was free, easy, and her husband must have known what she was doing.

  David found this incredible. He had no point of reference for it. His mother had never given his father a moment’s doubt, it wasn’t the sort of thing she did. When he thought about it, and that wasn’t often, David was almost surprised he’d been born. He couldn’t imagine his mother in the throes of passion.

  Ingrid had certainly never given him a moment’s doubt, for all that she was beautiful and much admired. But Ingrid’s looks weren’t the hot, flirtatious type that would lead a man on. Besides, Ingrid was a deeply moral woman and utterly loyal. She would die rather than be with another man, die rather than betray their family.

  It was different for women, David reasoned, most women were driven by straightforward rules of trying to keep their mate and protect their family. But men were driven by more complex evolutionary needs, and those didn’t have to interfere with the family or the job of protecting the people they loved, did they?

  He slowed down and smiled over his shoulder again at Rosemary. She was dark-haired, with a lovely tan. That was what had reminded him of the long-ago Chiara, and even wearing her black, beautician’s outfit, Rosemary looked amaz
ing. The simple tunic top clung in all the right places. Yes, his father would have approved.

  ‘Hello, Mr Kenny,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Would you like to try our new fragrance?’

  David stopped and shook his head. ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘My wife might wonder if I came home smelling of…’ he looked at the bottle carefully, ‘Honeyz.’

  This time, he favoured Rosemary with a more paternalistic smile. He could see her becoming flustered, as if she’d overstepped some invisible line. Of course she hadn’t really, but David knew better than to mess around on his own doorstep.

  ‘Are you enjoying working here, Rosemary?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Kenny,’ she said.

  ‘Good. I like the staff to feel happy,’ he said and walked on.

  No, his dad had taught him a lot of things about the business and chief among them was never dally with anyone who worked in Kenny’s. Don’t dally with anyone would have made more sense, but that was impossible.

  He’d been scared out of his mind the year before when Ingrid, the whole office of Politics Tonight and, indeed, the whole of the country had been agog over a murder case which involved a married school headmaster and several teacher girlfriends. The headmaster was the accused, the murder victim was his alleged girlfriend, one of his staff, and his alibi centred upon another female staff member. Ingrid, who wasn’t easily shocked, was horrified. Shocked on behalf of the dead woman and shocked on behalf of the headmaster’s bewildered wife, who’d known nothing until the police came to arrest her husband.

  It was the sort of case Ingrid disliked working on because she felt there was no way to report it except sensationally, and she loathed sensationalism.

  ‘How could she not have known?’ she said to David one evening as they sat at home over dinner. ‘She must have suspected, there had to be something. He’d need a motorbike with a jet engine attached to get round to them all.’

  She’d been so fired up about it, she put down her fork and stared at David across the table.

  ‘She must have known. I’d know,’ she added, almost angrily, glaring at him.

  For several, terrible moments, David thought that she did know, and all the things he ought to say deserted him, leaving only clichés there.

  It wasn’t anything, it didn’t mean anything, Ingrid, it’s you I love.

  All he could think was that, if only he could turn the clock back, if only she didn’t throw him out, he’d never do it again.

  He loved her so much: loved her, loved the children, didn’t want to destroy their lives. Even if the headmaster was innocent of murder, his whole life had been laid open, the whole world could see his infidelities. David felt sick to the stomach at the same thing happening to him; not that he’d murder anyone, God, but imagine it all coming out. And stranger things had happened. Ingrid was a public figure. Her picture was in the papers if they went to a film premiere or award ceremony.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ingrid muttered. ‘I’m getting carried away. You poor love, having to deal with me coming home at night, fired up on other people’s injustices. It’s just this case is driving me nuts. So, tell me about your day.’

  And David let out a breath, gently, carefully, in case she realised he’d been holding it in.

  ‘Oh, nothing much to tell,’ he said. Thank you, thank you, thank you, he whispered inside his head. That’s it, never again, no quick flings on business trips abroad, nothing, ever. Look at all you’ve got, look at all you could lose, don’t do it.

  ‘I love you, you know that,’ he said to Ingrid.

  ‘You’re so sweet,’ she said. ‘I’m being the crazy, journalist wife and you still love me. Thank you.’

  He hadn’t meant to after that, really hadn’t. It was just the opportunities had been there. A trip away, a hotel room, a woman who smiled admiringly at him. He recalled an internet joke he’d received about the differences between men and women:

  Why do women cheat, was followed by a litany of convoluted reasons.

  Why do men cheat? Because the opportunity presents itself occasionally.

  Then he met Steffi. And after Steffi, everything was different.

  It was lunchtime in the Hat Box Café, and David, who sometimes had an early sandwich there before the rush, was holding his tray and his newspaper, looking for somewhere to sit.

  In front of him, at a small table at the window, was Claudia.

  ‘David, this is my sister, Steffi,’ Claudia said, as David bent to put his tray on the table next to hers. When he straightened up, the girl sitting with Claudia put a hand forward to shake his and he found himself staring into an exquisite little face, with wide-spaced blue eyes, and a smile just as bright as Claudia’s. While Claudia was dark–he later found out that she took after their father–Steffi was a true blonde like their mother, with the most amazing hair, silky as the model’s in a Timotei commercial and just as long. She was older than Claudia, probably mid twenties, but somehow looked younger. Like a fairy from the Tinkerbell products they sold at the till in the children’s department, David thought admiringly.

  ‘How lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. Claudia never stops talking about how wonderful you are,’ she said guilelessly, and David, used to people being pleased to see him because of some scheme they wanted to run by him, felt himself melt.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything about you,’ he said, and moved his tray from the table next door to theirs. ‘Which is a terrible state of affairs,’ he added. ‘Where have you been hiding her, Claudia? Kenny’s needs gorgeous creatures like Steffi around.’

  Steffi laughed happily. She had a light melodious laugh, not like Claudia’s effervescent giggle. Definitely Tinkerbell, he decided.

  ‘Steffi dropped by to show me her new car,’ Claudia said. ‘She just got it yesterday.’

  ‘It’s ten years old and it’s a lovely silvery blue,’ said Steffi excitedly. ‘But it makes a very strange noise when you go up hills. A sort of clanking. I don’t know why. Do you think it’s all right, or should I go back to the man I got if from? I haven’t a clue about cars.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at it for you,’ said David.

  Steffi put her small hand on his arm and he felt a frisson of excitement. ‘That would be so kind of you,’ she said.

  And David, who’d been talking to a sombre accountant all morning about cash-flow projections, felt ten feet tall.

  He’d looked at the car that evening and somehow, because Ingrid was going to be out late, it seemed natural to take Claudia and Steffi for a dish of pasta afterwards, where they all chatted and laughed, and it was all very innocent, David told himself.

  He had several glasses of wine and Steffi insisted on dropping him home because he shouldn’t drive.

  ‘Just drop me at a taxi rank,’ David said.

  ‘Goodness no, you’ve been so kind to me, I’ll take you right home,’ she said. ‘You can tell me how I’m driving. It’s ages since I had a lesson, and I’m very bad on hill starts.’

  If only Claudia hadn’t said she needed to grab a few groceries, so she’d meet Steffi later at the flat they shared, it wouldn’t have happened.

  Sitting in her small car outside his house, a house he knew was empty, David planted a kiss on Steffi’s soft cheek and suddenly found himself asking her out to dinner again, alone.

  ‘I’d love that,’ she said, eyes wide like a fawn’s.

  There was nothing overtly sexy about Steffi. With her innocent blue eyes and curtain of blonde hair, she was the maiden waiting for her champion to come, and David fell at her feet. Steffi never demanded anything of him, never.

  She simply wanted to be with him. It was heady, exciting and hugely sexually thrilling. He’d found it took so much longer to get aroused these days, and although he’d never said anything about it to Ingrid, it upset him. But with Steffi, he was ready in an instant.

  It wasn’t her youth, he told himself, particularly when he had nightmares about Ingrid finding out. It was her
gentle compliance. She was naïve and charming, and perfectly willing to phone the flower shop where she worked and tell them she couldn’t come in when David had to go away on business and asked her to accompany him.

  When he was with her, he felt the power and energy he’d had when he was a young man. But as soon as he left her, the guilt would set in.

  Ingrid would be devastated by his betrayal. His other amours had been short-lived, but this wasn’t. Six months became a year became two years and counting. He knew that no woman would want her husband to have an affair, but he imagined trying to explain this one to Ingrid and knew that, while he’d have had some hope of repairing their marriage after a short, purely sexual fling, his relationship with Steffi would mean the divorce courts. Two years with a very young woman who was the polar opposite of Ingrid was indefensible. It would destroy Ingrid and their marriage. Forever.

  20

  Do what makes you happy. Tell the people you love that you love them. Forget about waiting for a rainy day. Do it now.

  Ingrid’s new hairstyle caused ructions in the press.

  First, it made headlines: Short sharp shock for Ireland’s queen of politics.

  Next, came the feature pieces where women with long, curling manes of hair were photographed–unflatteringly–beside women with coolly short styles like Ingrid.

  Women who mean business, ran the headline, followed by: how Ireland’s movers and shakers are turning their backs on girlie curls.

  ‘You’ve started something with your new haircut,’ said Gloria to Ingrid, as they sat in Ingrid’s office with the papers spread out in front of them.

  ‘That wasn’t the plan,’ said Ingrid, putting on her glasses to peer more closely at one photo of herself with her new hairstyle interviewing a politician.

  Her hair was still blonde, but instead of flowing gently around her shoulders, it was closely cropped to her head, so her bone structure and intelligent eyes were what people noticed, not a mass of hair. It suited her incredibly well, she had to admit, although it worked better because of the weight she’d lost.