“No,” she said. “We can’t. We were friends while we loved each other. I don’t love you anymore, Peter. And you don’t love me.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “I never stopped loving you.”
“I haven’t got time for this.” Carey stood up. “I have to get to work. I’m sorry things haven’t worked out for you, Peter, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m living a different life now. And I’m happy. I don’t want to see you again.”
“Sure,” said Peter. “I understand.”
“So don’t call me or anything because I won’t take your calls.”
“Yeah, fine,” he said.
“Goodbye.” She turned away from him.
“Carey?”
“What?”
“You were the best thing that came into my life.”
She shook her head and walked out of the restaurant.
Freya tapped perfunctorily on the door of Ben’s tiny office and walked in. “How’d it go this morning?” she asked.
“Good,” he said. “The magazine is going to do a feature on alternative remedies and we’ll be their main source. Good publicity, free advertising.”
“Great.” She sat on the edge of his desk and handed him a sheet of paper. “Run your eagle eye over this, will you?”
“What is it?” he asked as he took it.
“The guest-list,” she told him.
“For the reception?”
“Clearly.” She looked at him as though he were stupid. “What other kind of guest-list is there?”
“Could’ve been something to do with that health-drink promotion,” he said. He looked at the paper. “Thursday week?”
She shrugged. “Friday would’ve been better, of course. But this Friday is too soon and she isn’t off for another Friday or Saturday for ages. So that was the next best option.”
“Oleg’s?” He looked up at her inquiringly.
“A customer of the bank,” she said. “Brian knows the owner well. They lent money for it. Restaurant, night-club. Very trendy.”
“Rathgar,” said Ben. “A bit out of the way.”
“Out of the way?” She looked at him in amazement. “It’s very convenient.”
“Not for Carey’s family and friends,” said Ben. “Most of them will be coming from Swords and Portmarnock on the other side of the city.”
“Oh, it’s not that far,” said Freya dismissively. “They should be glad to hit some southside civilization.”
“Don’t say things like that in front of them,” warned Ben. “I’m sure it wouldn’t go down too well.”
“Teach your granny to suck eggs,” said Freya. “That list OK?”
Ben nodded.
“I’ll need the addresses for your mates in the soccer club,” said Freya. “For the invitations.”
Ben tapped on his computer keyboard and the printer rattled into life. “There you go.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll get them done up today and send them tomorrow.”
“You’re a gem,” said Ben. “You really are.”
“I know.” She grinned at him. “But I guess my brother only gets married once…” Her voice trailed off.
“Absolutely,” he told her.
“And how’s it going?”
“Great,” he said. “You’ll love her, Freya. You really will.”
“I’d assumed she’d make time to meet me before the party,” said Freya dryly. “But now I think I’d prefer to see her then. Makes it all the more exciting.”
Ben laughed. “She’s nervous about meeting you. She’s afraid you won’t like her.”
“Her folks liked you, didn’t they?”
“Ah, yes.” He laughed again. “But that was me!”
“True,” said Freya.
“What about you?” asked Ben.
“Pardon?”
“You. You and Brian. Wouldn’t you think of tying the knot?”
“Why?” she asked. “We’re perfectly happy the way we are. There’s far too much pressure put on people to be madly in love with someone. Or to be with the same person for ever.”
“Do you think I’m crazy?” asked Ben.
Freya sighed. “I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I really did think you’d marry Leah if you were going to marry anyone.”
“Sometimes I did too,” said Ben.
“I’d better get on with this.” She stood up and walked to the door. “It’ll be a great party.”
“I hope so,” said Ben. He returned his attention to the printout he’d been studying before she interrupted him.
Freya went back to her office and closed the door behind her. She put the invitation list on her desk and stared at it. Then she wrote Leah Ryder’s name in block capitals at the bottom. She’d promised an invitation to Leah and she wasn’t going to back down on that promise. But she knew, deep down, that Brian had a point when he’d said that inviting her was asking for trouble. What if she got horribly drunk and started shouting accusations at Ben? What if she had a blazing row with him and Carey got involved? Freya felt herself grow hot as she visualized the two girls going hell for leather at each other over the baked Alaska that she’d ordered to take the place of a wedding cake.
She pushed the sheet of paper across the desk. It was all Brian’s fault for making her think like this. If he hadn’t stuck his nose in, then she wouldn’t have worried about Leah because she was Leah’s friend, she’d known her for a long time, and she was almost certain that the other girl wouldn’t do anything to upset her. But now she was nervous because of Brian. Brian who normally rang her up and apologized after every argument (even ones instigated by her) but who hadn’t made contact since walking out of her apartment on Saturday. She supposed she couldn’t really blame him, she’d been rude and irritable, but just because she hadn’t begged him to stay didn’t mean she didn’t want to hear from him again. They usually spent weekends together and it had been strange to have had the whole day to herself yesterday without him. She hadn’t even been able to drop in on Ben because he, of course, had been at the Browne family lunch.
She tapped her teeth with her pen as she recalled him phoning her and telling her that she couldn’t come to dinner with them as he’d originally hoped because Carey had agreed to show him off to her family instead. And the wretched girl hadn’t been available any day during the week to meet — something to do with switching a shift with one of her colleagues or some equally lame excuse — which only confirmed Freya’s suspicions that Carey was trying to avoid her. Afraid, thought Freya grimly, that she’d see right through her. The girl had clearly reckoned on Ben as great husband material and had snapped him up before his brains had a chance to out-think his balls. And now Carey was trying to envelop Ben into her family and drive a wedge between him and the people who really cared for him. Well, as far as Freya was concerned, that just wasn’t going to happen.
She wondered how he really felt about Carey’s family. She couldn’t imagine sitting down at the table with an assortment of nephews or nieces, brothers- or sisters-in-law. She supposed there’d be lots of shouting and bickering and people trying to get their own points of view across. That’s how big family dinners were always portrayed in films. And there’d usually be some gigantic argument which ended up with someone storming off. Well, that was taking things a bit far, she knew. The storming off was part of the movie thing. But the shouting, arguing, and bickering — they were all family things, weren’t they? She sighed deeply. It was hard to tell. Even when their parents had been alive, family meals in the Russell house were quiet affairs. The only proper family meal had been on Sundays and then Charles Russell had retreated behind the Sunday Times while Gail dealt with the children.
She reached out and pulled the invitation list to her again. Given that the party was being held in Oleg’s and that Brian had been the one to arrange the venue, she knew that she would have to call him. She didn’t want to contact his friend without some kind of notice.
&n
bsp; Brian wasn’t at his desk so she left a message on his voice mail. She hated leaving voice-mail messages, so it sounded clipped and cool.
“Can you call me?” she said. “I need to talk to you about meeting Oleg for this stupid wedding party. I’m in the office all day. Thanks.”
Chapter Ten
LAVENDER
Blends well with other oils and is very versatile, being both relaxing and rejuvenating
The apartment where Leah Ryder lived was in a five-story block which had been built in the late sixties. This meant that even though she rented a studio, it was reasonably spacious. When Leah had moved in a couple of years earlier she’d immediately stripped away the hideous multi-colored swirling wallpaper that had made her feel as though she was on some wild drugs trip, invested in some deep-pile rugs to cover the plain gray carpet, and repainted the walls in soft cream. Then she’d hung them with huge copies of her favorite Japanese silk paintings. She’d consulted her feng shui book before rearranging the furniture, bought a handprinted screen to separate the sleeping and living areas, and invested in hundreds of scented candles, which she dotted around the apartment in clusters of deep and vibrant color. She also had an assortment of unscented ones: thin and tapered in wide dishes filled with fine sand, fat and chunky embossed with Japanese calligraphy, and pale pink floating shapes, which were in a patterned bowl on the black lacquered table.
Now, on the evening of Ben and Carey’s wedding party, she walked around the apartment and lit all thirty of her jasmine candles, including the one decorated with the Japanese symbol for good luck. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her hands trembled. She took the invitation from the glass-topped table, then sat in her soft and squashy maroon armchair and drew her legs beneath her.
“Ben and Carey just got married,” she read as she clenched her teeth. “We’d like you to celebrate with us. Oleg’s, Rathgar, Friday 14th, 7.30 p.m. RSVP.” The replies were to be sent to Freya either by phone, e-mail, or post. Leah had sent her acceptance to Freya’s e-mail address almost straight away and since then had thought of nothing else. She couldn’t wait to see Ben’s wife. She couldn’t wait to see the woman who, one day, would leave him.
She tore at the corner of the invitation. She’d been anticipating tonight for ages, telling herself that she was going to look so gorgeous and so sexy that Ben would be shocked into realizing what he’d given up. Part of her wanted to ruin the night because she really did want to humiliate Ben in the way that he’d humiliated her. But if she did that she’d also ruin her friendship with Freya, and she didn’t want that to happen. And she might generate sympathy for Carey, which was out of the question. Yet how could she go and smile and pretend that none of it mattered to her? He’d treated her so badly, sleeping with her, pretending that he cared about her, when all he wanted was to find any other woman to marry! It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And he should suffer for it.
The trick would be to find the right time to make him suffer the most.
Freya was waiting for Brian to pick her up. They were going to Oleg’s early to make sure that everything was perfect. When she’d spoken to Ben on the phone earlier he’d told her not to fuss about it all, that he and Carey would come early themselves if she liked, and she’d snapped at him and told him that she was organizing the bloody event and that he was to have nothing to do with it other than turn up! And that they weren’t to be early or fashionably late, simply on time. At which he’d uncharacteristically snapped back at her and said that it was all her idea and that he’d gone along with it, but now he wished he hadn’t because Carey was having some kind of crisis in the bathroom and it really wasn’t worth all the goddamned effort, was it? After all, he said furiously, this was exactly the kind of thing they’d been hoping to avoid by getting married in Las Vegas! And she’d retorted that this was rubbish, since they’d obviously just rushed off and got married without thinking of anything at all.
The whole conversation had left her absolutely reeling and shaking with rage so that she’d managed to smudge mascara all over her carefully powdered eyelids, necessitating a complete re-do, which had left her running late. But even though she was late, Brian was even later, and as she looked at her watch, she was giving him five more minutes and then she was leaving because she really couldn’t be doing with the tension of hanging around waiting for him.
Things were still not going smoothly with Brian. When he’d eventually responded to the message she’d left on his voice mail his tone was cool and unfriendly — totally un-Brian-like, in fact. The best thing about Brian, the thing that had kept them together for so long, had been his willingness to shrug off any disagreements between them and act as though nothing had even happened. Only this time he hadn’t done that and she knew that there was an undercurrent, but she didn’t know how to deal with it. Brian was supposed to be the easy part of her life, she told herself as she checked her hair in the mirror for the tenth time. He was her rock, the person she depended on, and she didn’t want that to change.
She didn’t want it to change at all. She wanted to hold on to things exactly as they were. And yet now, with Ben getting married and other people raising their eyebrows at her — a sort of middle-aged spinster if you wanted to be old-fashioned about it — she was beginning to wonder what exactly she was holding on to. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to let her thoughts stray down those paths. She did know what she was holding on to. She was holding on to her carefully constructed and very happy life.
She’d just glanced at her watch again when the buzzer sounded. About bloody time, she thought, as she picked up her bag and closed the door behind her.
“Do you think I look like the mother of the bride?” asked Maude as she walked into the bedroom in her stockinged feet.
“You are the mother of the bride,” said Arthur.
“I’m not.” Maude stuck another clip in her hair. “I’m the mother of the married woman and I don’t want to look too frothy.”
“You never look frothy,” said Arthur. “You look elegant.”
“Thank you.” Maude beamed at him. “You know, sometimes — very occasionally, obviously — you say the nicest things to me.”
“Don’t start with all this romantic guff now,” Arthur grunted. “I don’t need to say romantic things to you, woman. Sure you know them all already.”
“It’s nice to hear them just the same,” said Maude.
“What is it with you females?” asked her husband. “No matter that we’ve been married for more than forty years, you still want romance?”
“Of course.” Maude turned from the full-length mirror in which she’d been surveying her appearance. “I can still feel romantic, can’t I? Even though I might look more like a date with destiny than Destiny’s Child.”
“Who’s Destiny’s Child?” asked Arthur. “Do I know her?”
“They’re a group,” said Maude. “Actually, they could be any kind of group for all I know, but they’re one that Nadia used to like. In fact, I suppose by now they’ve broken up and have started pursuing their solo careers as serious artistes.”
Arthur laughed. “You’re mad, you know that?”
“I always want to be a bit mad,” said Maude. “At least that way I know that I’m still young at heart despite what the exterior shows.”
“The exterior looks damn good to me,” said Arthur.
“Really?”
“Really.” He put his hands on Maude’s shoulder and drew her towards him. “I just hope that Carey is as lucky as I’ve been. Even though I’ve no hope that she will be.”
“I hope she’s as lucky as me.” Maude kissed Arthur on the lips. “Do we have time for this?” she whispered as he began to unzip her salmon-pink dress.
“Of course,” he told her. “Besides, I need to check out everything you’re wearing. Make sure that you look good from the bottom up.”
“Arthur!” But Maude giggled as she lay on the bed while her husband removed his carefully presse
d jacket and trousers. “I love you,” she added as he joined her.
“I love you too,” said Arthur. “I love you more now than I did when I first married you. And if that’s not romantic enough for you, you can just divorce me!”
“I have to get into the bathroom!” Nadia Lynch thumped on the door and stamped her foot.
“I’m not finished yet,” called Jeanne. “Go away.”
“You’ve been in there for about three hours,” complained Nadia. “It’s not fair. I have to get ready too, you know.”
“What getting ready do you need to do?” asked Jeanne scornfully. “You’ve washed your face, haven’t you?”
“You think you’re the only one in this house who wants to look nice,” cried Nadia. “I’m entitled to look nice too. I’m going to tell Mum that you won’t let me in.”
“Oh, don’t be so childish!”
“I’m going to tell her. And,” added Nadia grimly, “I’m going to tell her that you took her Age-Defying Mask face capsule things — and that really expensive body spray that Dad bought her for her birthday.”
“You are such a pain.” Jeanne flung the bathroom door open so that it banged off the wall and the handle took a lump out of the plaster. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”
“I didn’t make you do anything,” said Nadia. “And you’d better hurry up and get her make-up back into her room ’cos she’ll be up shortly.”
“You’re a complete bitch,” muttered Jeanne. “You really are.”
“I’ve a good teacher.” Nadia stuck her tongue out at her sister before closing the bathroom door and locking it firmly behind her.
Jeanne walked along the landing and slipped into her parents’ room. She replaced Sylvia’s beauty products on the dressing-table and managed to get out just as her mother started up the stairs.
“You look lovely,” said Sylvia as she caught sight of her elder daughter whose hours in the bathroom really had resulted in a pretty good make-up job. “Although you know what your dad thinks about those studs.”
“It’s just stuck on,” said Jeanne. She wrinkled her nose. “And I like it.”
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