Not What You Think

by Melissa Hill

  “Well, we need to put an extra panel in there, anyway,” Brid concluded briskly to Cathy before turning to examine Laura. “What do you think, Laura? Are you happy with your dress?” She tugged gently at the straps. “I think maybe we could tighten these a tiny bit, just to lift you slightly at the bust and . . .”

  “It’s perfect.” Laura glanced across at Nicola who was studying her earnestly, a proud look on her face. “You look beautiful, Laura,” Nicola said. “Just perfect.”

  “Thanks,” Laura was pleased.

  “Still, the rest of ye won’t hold a candle to me on the day,” Nicola added with a wicked grin. “I’ll be the talk of Glengarrah!”

  Laura laughed. She understood her friend well enough to know that, despite her self-deprecation and offhand jokes, Nicola was a little self-conscious about going up the aisle. But Brid had done a fine job with the two-piece, and Nicola would look just as good as everyone else on the day.

  Laura opened the box and took out the jewellery she had designed for her bridesmaids. She smiled shyly. “See how this looks with it.”

  The neckpiece was fashioned with silver so fine it looked like hand-spun thread. Each concentric circle was intertwined with amethysts, the stones accentuating the colour of the bridesmaid’s dresses. There were earrings to match, and the designs had a vague tribal-princess look – an effect that Laura had been trying to perfect for quite some time. Nicola and Cathy were wearing strapless and relatively undecorated bodices, and would be wearing their hair up, so with the neckpieces the overall effect would be stunning.

  Brid and Amanda moved over to take a closer look. “Wow,” Brid gasped. “Laura, where did you get these – they’re fantastic!”

  Cathy looked across with interest, but her face fell when she realised what she would be wearing. “I thought you’d buy us something,” she said mournfully. “Something decent, or at least something we could keep.”

  “But it is something you can keep!” Nicola gave Cathy a look of mild surprise. “This is astonishing, totally originally – Laura, this is just – incredible!” Nicola couldn’t think of enough superlatives to describe it.

  Cathy was unmoved. “When I was Sharon Costigan’s bridesmaid, she gave us a gold T-bar chain each. I have enough of your plastic at home already. Honestly, every Christmas or birthday or –”

  “You made these, Laura?” Brid interrupted, goggle-eyed in amazement. “But how?”

  “Laura’s a jewellery designer.” Nicola said proudly. “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No, she did not.” Brid gave Laura a reproving look. “You never said a word, Laura.”

  Laura reddened, unused to all this lavish praise. “I haven’t been doing it for very long,” she said, almost apologetically.

  “Give us a look at the one you made for yourself,” Nicola urged, suspecting that Laura’s own piece would undoubtedly be something special. She wasn’t wrong.

  The bridal neckpiece was again the same circle design, but using gold and mother-of-pearl, instead of amethyst. And then there was the corresponding tiara and Kerry was thrilled to see that Laura had fashioned a smaller tiara for her too.

  “Now who’s a real princess!” Laura said, placing the replica tiara on Kerry’s little blonde head.

  “This is just amazing,” Brid said, fastening the neckpiece on Laura, and standing back to admire the effect. “All this time, I couldn’t understand why you wanted such a plain dress, but now I do. This puts my work to shame!”

  Laura laughed. “Don’t be silly, Brid. It’s just something simple.”

  “Something simple! I wish the rubbish I get to go with my dresses was more like this. Instead I get beads and bits of wire that fall to pieces in minutes. ‘Exclusive Tiaras’, my foot!”

  Laura’s heart began to pound. This was the part where she should offer to show Brid more of her designs. Maybe Brid might become a customer. No, she couldn’t ask her, not now in front of everyone. It would be too embarrassing and she didn’t want Brid to feel as though she had to say yes. Laura was still Brid’s customer and she couldn’t put her on the spot like that. No, she’d wait until after the wedding – then she might say something.

  Cathy had taken her neckpiece off, and Amanda was carefully examining the detail. “Do you specialise in bridal jewellery only, Laura?” she asked.

  “No, not at all,” Laura said, suddenly embarrassed by all the interest in her work. “But I’ve never done anything quite so elaborate before.”

  “Really gorgeous,” Amanda said, putting down the neckpiece and picking up the earrings, which were basically miniature versions of the neck design. “Where are you stocked, Laura? You must be run off your feet with these.”

  Laura reddened. “I am – sometimes I can’t keep up with the demand.” The words were out before she could stop them, and she gave a short nervous laugh to cover her discomfort. Luckily Nicola was now being helped out of her bodice, and didn’t overhear. She’d murder her for not seizing what could be a real opportunity.

  But she couldn’t admit the truth to this woman who was so admiring of her designs. Laura’s pride wouldn’t let her admit that, most of the time, she sat twiddling her thumbs at home.

  Chapter 22

  WHEN SHE WAS absolutely positive that Dan and John had left for their late afternoon meeting in town, Chloe entered the offices of O’Leary & Hunt, Chartered Accountants.

  “Hello,” she said to the young receptionist at the front desk, who had absolutely no idea that the blonde woman standing before her was her boss’s fiancée. “I’m looking for . . .” she made a great show of studying the folder she carried, “for a Mr Hunt, please.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Hunt is out of the office for the afternoon.” The girl spoke as though she had rattled off that line many times before.

  “Would Mr O’Leary be available, then?” Chloe asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

  “I’m afraid Mr O’Leary is meeting with clients at the moment. He’s also out for the afternoon.”

  “Oh, dear.” Chloe feigned an unimpressed frown.

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  “No, it’s is a spur-of-the-moment visit, actually. I’m here on behalf of a previous client of Mr Hunt’s. I’m her legal representative, and I was really hoping to speak to one of the partners about my client’s affairs.” She flashed a business card.

  “Oh. Well, if you’d like to leave your name and number, I can get Mr Hunt to phone you,” the receptionist offered.

  “No, I’m on my way down the country this afternoon, and just popped in on the off-chance. I was really hoping to speak to someone, though.” Chloe sighed dramatically, but then her eyes widened, as if she had just thought of something. “Tell you what, maybe you could help me. You’re Mr Hunt’s personal secretary, yes?”

  The girl blushed, flattered. “No, I’m only a student on work-experience here for the summer. Mr Hunt’s PA is upstairs. Would you like to speak to her?”

  Chloe pretended to study her folder again. That was exactly what she’d like. Chloe had spoken to his PA on the phone a few times but luckily they had never met. The woman wouldn’t know Chloe from Adam, so hopefully by using the solicitor’s ruse she would be able to glean some information from her on events from a few years ago ie, Dan’s marriage break-up.

  She looked up and smiled beatifically at the young receptionist. “If you wouldn’t mind checking that she’s free. It’s Miss Fogarty, isn’t it?”

  The receptionist nodded, and dialled the extension. She spoke pleasantly into the mouthpiece. “Are you free for a moment, Shannon?” she asked. “There’s someone at reception hoping to speak with you.”

  * * *

  “So, you knew Nicola well then?” Chloe asked, offering a cigarette.

  The other woman shrugged. “Not that well, but you could say that I knew a lot about her. Dan and I were close and he confided in me, particularly when things weren’t going well.”

  “I see.”


  “Nicola wasn’t right for him. I could see that from the very beginning. When they got married John and I gave it three years max.” She gave a short laugh. “Still, I didn’t think we’d be that close to the mark!”

  “So what went wrong for them?” There was no point in beating about the bush, and Chloe sensed that the other woman seemed only too happy to dish the dirt.

  “A number of things,” she said, echoing exactly what John O’Leary had told Chloe. “His parents hated her. She wasn’t good enough for him in their eyes, quite rightly too I think.”

  “Not good enough? How?”

  She exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Come on! She had nothing going for her. Dan has his own business, he comes from a very well-off family and his father was a self-made man for Chrissake! But her parents – well, let’s just say they weren’t exactly the Rockefellers.”

  Chloe looked at her. “That sounds a bit harsh,” she said and, despite herself, felt a bit sorry for Nicola. Would Dan really let that kind of snobbery affect him? And who the hell these days worried about backgrounds when choosing a partner?

  “You asked, I’m just telling you how it happened.”

  “So was that it then? Did Dan’s parents succeed in breaking them up?”

  A derisive snort. “You could say that. But there were other things too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, Nicola was mad for a baby from the very beginning. Dan wasn’t so sure though. I think – no – I know that he wanted to wait for a few years, didn’t want the pressure of a young family along with the pressure of running a new business. But he said that Nicola kept pushing him and pushing him and eventually she got her wish.”

  “Her wish? You don’t mean that she got pregnant?”

  “Yep – eventually.”

  “What?” Chloe nearly fell off her chair. Her heart pounded with panic. Dan had never told her. He had a child with Nicola and he never told her. But why not? And where was the child now? Was that why he had been so anxious about her coming back to Ireland? Was it because he was hiding a secret child? “You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed. “Dan and Nicola had a child together?”

  “I never said that they had a child – I said that she got pregnant. She lost it.”

  “Oh.” Chloe felt something akin to relief. That explained a lot, a hell of a lot, actually. She breathed deeply. Things were finally beginning to make sense now. Dan doesn’t want a child, Nicola does, she gets pregnant, loses the baby and blames Dan for not wanting it in the first place.

  End of story and – more importantly – end of marriage.

  She didn’t have to try too hard to imagine how it all went after that. Nicola devastated by her loss and Dan’s rejection of their baby initiates the divorce, Dan sick to the teeth of it all agrees, they separate, Nicola moves away and all concerned (including Dan’s parents) are happy.

  “But of course the affair didn’t help either.”

  “What?” Chloe couldn’t hide her surprise. An affair? This was incredible! Dan had an affair! She didn’t think he had it in him.

  “Yep. Not long after the miscarriage.”

  Wow! Now Chloe was really shocked. Dan just didn’t seem the cheating type. He just wasn’t that interested in other women. OK, he had a few female friends but that was it. He never noticed things other men noticed, like long legs and big boobs – the normal things! Whenever they were out together she might point out a good-looking woman across the room, just to see if she had caught his eye, but nine times out of ten he wouldn’t even have seen her. Chloe supposed she should be flattered, but then again Dan was so used to women making eyes and practically throwing themselves at him, that he didn’t really give a shit. And although she hated admitting it, even to herself, it had taken Chloe weeks to get him to notice her.

  The very first time she saw Dan, he had been a guest at one of her friend Alison’s Sunday barbecues. He and John had been invited by Alison’s fiancé, who used Dan and John’s accountancy firm. Chloe remembered thinking he looked exactly like Mel Gibson did in that film Forever Young, all sweet-faced and blue-eyed. For most of that day she had followed his every move out of the corner of her eye, laughing and joking loudly, trying to get him to notice her. It had been impossible, and he seemed the only man in the room that wasn’t drooling over her in that short red Ben de Lisi she had been wearing.

  Eventually, she had no choice but to walk right up to him and introduce herself.

  “Haven’t we met before somewhere?” Chloe cringed when she thought about it now, but at the time it was as good a line as any.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, a slight smile playing about his lips, leaving Chloe in no doubt that he was used to this kind of thing.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you might be a client of my father’s.”

  “And your father is . . . ?”

  “Jeff Fallon. As in Fallon & Co? Solicitors?”

  Dan shook his head.

  “Are you sure? I’m almost positive I saw you in the office last week, with one of the partners?” She was getting desperate now and she was sure he could see it in her eyes.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Oh – OK.” Chloe feigned nonchalance. She might as well give up. “Well, nice meeting you then – Dan, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “See you later.”

  “Yes, enjoy the party.”

  Chloe remembered walking off in a right mood. Who the hell did he think he was? Then a thought struck her. Maybe he was gay! Of course – that had to be it. Why else would Dan have kept his gaze on her face throughout the entire conversation, when the neckline on her dress plunged deeper than Angel Falls? He was almost definitely gay.

  “Isn’t he gorgeous?” she heard Alison say beside her. “Only for I’m an engaged woman,” she flashed her white gold solitaire, never missing an opportunity to show it off, “I’d probably be running after him too!”

  Running after him? Chloe didn’t need to run after anyone!

  “I think you’d be wasting your time.” Chloe growled sulkily. “I don’t think he’s that way inclined.”

  “What? Don’t be silly. According to Scott, he’s not long separated from his wife. Upped and left to England apparently.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I mean, who in their right mind would leave someone like that? He’s an absolute angel!”

  Chloe stopped her mind wandering and brought her attention back to the present. Well, apparently Nicola had left someone like that.

  Because her beloved husband hadn’t turned out to be such an angel, after all.

  Chapter 23

  NICOLA’S EXTENSION BUZZED. “Nicola, can you come down to my office for a moment please?”

  “Um, just two minutes, Ken. I’m in the middle of something here.”

  Nicola made a face, and speed-read the remainder of the Cosmo article she’d been engrossed in. Ken sounded pissed off. That only meant one thing. The end-of-quarter figures were in and obviously weren’t up to scratch.

  Shit! She had thought that Mode article would do wonders for the membership figures. It wouldn’t have been worth posing for all those embarrassing photographs otherwise.

  She wondered how she and Ken could explain away her lack of success to the partners. Hell, she couldn’t even explain that to herself. Her heart just didn’t seem to be in it these days. There was just way too much going on in her head.

  Nicola fiddled with a strand of her hair. She hadn’t heard from Dan since his call the other day, which was good. At least it meant she wouldn’t have to keep secrets from Ken. She wondered now, as Laura had, if Dan had ever mentioned meeting her to his fiancée, and if not, why not?

  She wondered too, and not for the first time, about the quality of the relationship between them. Dan wasn’t devious – at least, he hadn’t been, not for most of their relationship, and even for most of their marriage except towards the end really.

  She recalled their conversation in Bray that day. It was strange h
ow he reacted when she told him about Ken. It had obviously bothered him to find that the two of them were together, but what did it matter now? It was no longer any of his business.

  But yet, Nicola thought, remembering, Dan had never really got over her and Ken, had he?

  * * *

  At the time, Nicola didn’t think she could cope. Dan had been quiet – distant even. But how could she be expected to help him through it, when she couldn’t even help herself? It was as though a dark cloud had descended on their marriage since . . . since she lost the baby.

  It had been too difficult to even think about it, let alone talk about it. Even as the weeks went by, the pain was still physical, vivid and all too real. It was just so there.

  She remembered what the doctor had told her afterwards.

  “You’re young, Mrs Hunt. Leave it a few months and then you can start trying for another one,” he had said after performing a D&C. Nicola had wanted to kill him then. She had wanted to catch him and strangle him and make him feel some of what she was feeling.

  Try for another one? How could he even suggest that? Did he not realise how she felt? How she felt as though a part of her insides had died? Because in theory that’s exactly what had happened. Her baby, her and Dan’s baby had died. OK, so she had only been five and a half months gone, but that baby had meant everything to her and Dan.

  They had been so happy, so thrilled about it all. She should have known, though. She should have known that it was bad luck going into Mothercare every time she happened to be in town, picking out bits and pieces ‘for the baby’.

  What baby? Now those purchases were locked away up in the dark attic, never to see the light of day. Much like Nicola’s feelings.

  Would she and Dan ever see the light of day? Would she ever be able to look into his eyes again without seeing blame and sorrow reflected in them?

  Because she knew he blamed her. She knew that he thought she should have gone straight to hospital when the pains started, instead of ignoring them and hoping they would go away. But she was at work at the time, the pains weren’t that bad, and to be honest, she didn’t really think that anything was wrong. How could she possibly have known?