Quentins

QUENTINS

by Maeve Binchy

Also by Maeve Binchy

Light a Penny Candle

Echoes London Transports

Dublin 4

The Lilac Bus

Firefly Summer

Silver Wedding

Circle of Friends

The Copper Beech

The Glass Lake

Evening Class

To my dear good Gordon. Thank you for a lifetime of generosity, understanding and love.

Chapter One.

When Ella Brady was six she went to Quentins. It was the first time anyone had called her Madam. A woman in a black dress with a lace collar had led them to the table. She had settled Ella's parents in and then held out a chair for the six-year-old.

"You might like to sit here, Madam, it will give you a full view of everything," she said. Ella was delighted and well able to deal with the situation.

"Thank you, I'd like that," she said graciously. "You see, it's my very first time here." This was in case anyone might mistake her for a regular diner.

Her mother and father probably were looking at her dotingly, as they always did. That's what all the childhood pictures showed, anyway ... complete adoration. She remembered her mother telling her that she was the best girl in the world, and her father saying it was a great pity he had to go off to the office every day, otherwise he would stay at home with the best girl.

Once Ella asked why she didn't have sisters and brothers like everyone else seemed to. Her mother said that God had only sent one to this family, but weren't they lucky that it was such a wonderful one. Years later, Ella learned of the many miscarriages and false hopes. But at the time the explanation satisfied her completely, and it did mean that there was no one she had to share her toys or her parents with and that had to be good. They took her to the zoo and introduced her to the animals, they brought her to the circus whenever it came to town, they even went for a weekend to London and took her picture outside Buckingham Palace. But somehow nothing was ever as important as that first visit to a grown-up restaurant, where she had been called Madam and given a seat with a good view.

The Bradys lived in Tara Road, in a house which they had bought years ago before prices started to rocket. It was a tall house with a big back garden where Ella could invite her friends from school. The house had been divided into apartments when the Bradys bought it. So there was a bathroom and kitchenette on every floor. They had restored most of it to make it a family home but Ella's friends "were very envious that she had what was like a little world of her own. It was a peaceful, orderly life. Her father Tim had a twenty-two-minute walk to the office every day, and twenty-nine minutes back on the return journey, because he paused to have a half-pint of beer and read the evening paper.

Ella's mother, Barbara, only worked mornings. She was the one who opened up the solicitors" offices right in town near Merrion Square. They trusted her utterly, she always said proudly, to have everything ready when the partners arrived in at 9.30 a.m. All their mail would be on their desks sorted for them. Someone to answer early-morning phone calls and to imply that they were already at work. Then she would go through the huge collection in what was called Barbara's Basket, where they all left anything at all to do with money. Barbara thought of herself as a super-efficient bookkeeper, and she controlled the four disorganised, crusty lawyers she worked for with iron rules. Where was this receipt for transport undertaken in the course of a case? Where was that invoice for the new stationery that someone had ordered? Obediently, like small boys, they delivered their accounts to her and she kept them in great ledgers. Barbara dreaded the day when they would all become computerised. But it was still far away. These four would move very slowly. They would have liked the quill pen to work with had they been given a choice!

Barbara Brady left the office at lunchtime. At first she needed to do this in order to pick Ella up from school, but even when her daughter was old enough to return accompanied only by a crowd of laughing girls, Barbara continued the routine of working a half day only. Barbara knew that she achieved more in her four-and-a half-hour stint than most others did in a full day. And she knew that her employers realised this too. So she was always in the house when Ella returned. It all worked out very well. Ella had somebody at home to provide a glass of milk and shortbread and to listen to her colourful account of the events of the day, this drama and that adventure. Also, to help her with what homework needed to be done.

This system meant that Tim Brady had an orderly house and a good cooked meal to return to when he got back from the investment brokers where he worked with ever-increasing anxiety over the years. And when he came home every evening at the same time, Ella had a second audience for her marvellous people-filled stories. And the lines of care would fall gradually from his face as she followed her father around the garden, first as a toddler then as a leggy schoolgirl. She would ask questions about the office that her own mother would never dare to ask. Did they think well of Daddy at the office? Was he ever going to be in charge? And later, when it was clear to Ella how unhappy her father was, she asked him why he didn't go somewhere else to work.

Tim Brady might have left the office where he was so uneasy, and gone to another position, but the Bradys were not people to whom change came easily. They had taken a long time to commit to marriage, and an even longer time to produce Ella. They were nearly forty when she arrived, a different generation from the other parents of young children. But that only deepened their love for her. And their determination that she should have everything that life could possibly give her. They did their basement up as a self-contained flat, and let it to three bank girls in order to make a fund for Ella's education. They never did anything just for themselves. In the beginning a few heads were shaken about it all. Was there a possibility that they did too much for the child? some people wondered. That they would spoil her totally? But as it happened even those who had forebodings had to agree that all this love and attention did Ella no harm at all.

From the start she seemed able to laugh at herself. And everyone else. She grew into a tall, confident girl who was open and friendly and who seemed to love her parents as much as they loved her.

Ella kept a photograph album of all the happy events of childhood, and wrote captions under the pictures: "Daddy and Mam and the Chimp at the zoo. Chimp is on left", and would peal with laughter at it every time.

Even at the age of thirteen when other children might have wriggled away from scenes of family life, Ella's blonde head pored over the pictures.

"Was that the blue dress I wore to Quentins?" she asked.

"Imagine you remembering that!" Her father was delighted.

"Is it still there?" she asked.

"Very much so, it's got smarter, more expensive, but it's certainly still there and doing well."

"Oh." She seemed disappointed to hear it had become expensive. Her parents looked at each other.

"It's a long time since she's been there, Tim."

"Over half her lifetime," he agreed, and they decided to go to Quentins on Saturday night.

Ella looked at everything with her sharp young eyes. The place looked a lot more luxurious now than the last time. The thick linen napkins had an embroidered Q on them. The waiters and waitresses wore smart black trousers and white shirts, they knew all about every dish and explained clearly how they were cooked.

Brenda Brennan had noticed the girl looking around with interest. She was exactly the teenage daughter that Brenda would have loved to have had. Alert, friendly, laughing with her parents and grateful for being taken out to a smart place to eat. You didn't always see them like that. Often they were bored and sulky and she would tell Patrick later on in the night that possibly they had been lucky to escape parenthood. But this one was every mother's dream. And her parents didn't look all that young, either. The man could be sixty, he was tired and slightly stooped, the mother in her fifties. Lucky people, the Bradys, to have had such a treasure late in their years.

"What do most people like best to eat, are there any favourites?" the girl asked Brenda when she brought them the menu.

"A lot of our customers like the way we do fish . .. we keep it very simple, with a sauce on the side. And of course many more people are vegetarian nowadays, so Chef has to think up new recipes all the time."

"He must be very clever," Ella said. "And does he talk to you all normally and everything while he's working? I mean, is he temperamental?"

"Oh, he talks all right, not always normally; then of course he's married to me, so he has to talk to me or I'd murder him." They all laughed together and Ella felt so good to be treated as one of the grown-ups. Then Brenda moved on to another table.

Ella saw both her parents looking at her very intensely.

"What's wrong? Did I talk too much?" she asked, looking from one to the other. She knew she was inclined to prattle on.

"Nothing's wrong, sweetheart. I was just thinking what a pleasure it is to bring you anywhere, you get so much out of everything and everyone" her mother said.

"And I was thinking almost the very same thing," her father said, beaming at her.

And as Ella went on to high school she wondered if it was possible that they might care too much about her. All the other girls at school said that their parents were utterly monstrous. She gave a little shiver in case suddenly everything went sour. Maybe her parents wouldn't like her clothes, her career, her husband? It was going dangerously smoothly so far. And it continued to go well during what were meant to be the years from Hell, when Ella was sixteen and seventeen. Every other girl at the school had been in open warfare with one or both parents. There had been scenes and tears and dramas. But never in the Brady household.

Barbara may have thought the party dresses Ella bought were far too skimpy. Tim may have thought the music coming from Ella's bedroom too loud. Ella might have wished that her father didn't turn up in his nice safe car and wait outside the disco to take her home at the end of an evening, as if she were a six-year-old. But if anyone thought these things they "were never said. Ella did complain that her father fussed over her too much and that her mother worried about her, but she did it lovingly. By the time Ella was eighteen and ready to go to university, it was still one of the most cheerful, peaceful households in the Western Hemisphere.

Ella's friend Deirdre was full of envy. "It's not fair, really it isn't. They haven't even got annoyed with you for doing science. Most parents refuse point-blank to let you do what you want."

I know," Ella said, worried. "It's a bit abnormal, isn't it?"

"They don't have rows, either," Deirdre grumbled. "Mine are always on at each other about money and drink ... everything, in fact."

Ella shrugged. "No, they don't drink, and of course we rent out the flat so they have plenty of money .. . and I'm not a drug addict or anything, so I suppose they don't have any worries."

"But why are they all on red alert about everything in my house?" Deirdre wailed. Ella shrugged. She couldn't explain it ... it just didn't seem to be a problem.

"Wait until we want to stay out all night and go to bed with fellows, then it will be a problem," Deirdre said with her voice full of menace.

But oddly when that happened it wasn't a problem at all.

In their first year at university, Ella and Deirdre had made a new friend, Nuala, who was from the country and had her own flat. Right in the centre of the city. So whenever anything was going to be too late or too hard to get home from, the fiction of Nuala's flat was used. Ella wondered if they were truly convinced, or did they suspect that she might be up to some adventure. Perhaps they didn't want to know about any adventures, so they didn't ask questions to which the answers, if truthful, might be unacceptable. They just trusted her to get along with everything as they always had. Occasionally she felt a bit guilty, but there weren't all that many occasions.

Ella never fell in love during her four years at university, which made her unusual. She did have sex, though. Not a great deal of it. Ella's first lover was Nick, a fellow student. Nick Hayes was first and foremost a friend, but one night he told Ella that he had fancied her from the moment she had come into the first lecture. She had been so cool and calm while he had always been overeager and loud and saying the wrong thing.

"I never saw you like that," Ella said truthfully.

"It's got to do with having freckles, green eyes, and having to shout for attention as a member of a large family," he explained.

"Well, I think it's nice," she said.

"Does that mean you fancy me a bit too?" he asked hopefully.

"I'm not sure," she said.

He was so disappointed that she couldn't bear to see his face. "Couldn't we just talk a lot instead of desiring each other?" she asked. "I'd love to know about you and why you think science is a good way into film-making, and, well.. . lots of things," she ended lamely.

"Does that mean that you find me loathsome, repulsive?" he asked.

Ella looked at him. He was trying to joke, but his face looked very vulnerable. "I find you very attractive, Nick," she said.

And so they became lovers.

It was less than successful. Oddly they weren't either upset or embarrassed. They were just surprised.

After a few attempts they agreed that it wasn't all they had expected it to be. Nick said that it was his first time too, and that perhaps they should both go off and get experience with people who knew all about it.

"Maybe it was like driving a car," he said seriously. "You should learn from someone who knows how to do it."

Then she was fancied by a sporting hero, who was astonished when she said she didn't want to have sex with him.

"Are you frigid, or what?" he had asked, searching for an explanation.

I don't think so, no," Ella had said.

"Oh, I think you must be," said the sporting hero in an aggrieved manner. So then Ella thought it might be no harm to try it with him, since he was known to have had a lot of ladies. It wasn't any better than with Nick, and there was nothing to talk about, so it was probably worse. She had the small compliment of being told by the sporting hero that she most definitely wasn't frigid.

There were only two other brief experiences, which, compared to Deirdre and Nuala's adventures, were very poor. But Ella wasn't put out. She was twenty-two and a science graduate; she would find love sooner or later. Like everyone.

Nuala found love first. Frank, dark and brooding. Nuala adored him. When he said that he wanted to join his two brothers in their construction business in London, she was heartbroken.

This called for an emergency dinner at Quentins. "I really and truly thought he cared, how could I have been so taken in, so humiliated?" she wept to Deirdre and Ella when they settled at their table.

It was meant to be an Early Bird dinner, where people came in at six-thirty and left by eight. It was intended for pre-theatre goers, and the restaurant hoped to be able to have a second sitting for the table. But Deirdre, Ella and Nuala showed no signs of leaving. Mon, the lively little blonde waitress, cleared her throat a couple of times but it was no use.

Finally Ella approached Mrs. Brennan. "I'm very sorry. I know we are meant to be Early Bird and the cheaper menu, but one of the birds at our table has a terrible crisis and we are trying to pat down her feathers."

Brenda laughed despite herself and despite the people waiting in the bar for the next sitting.

"Go on then, pat her down," she said good-naturedly.

"Send them a bottle of house red, with a note saying: "To help the crisis"," she told Mon.

"I thought we were meant to be dislodging the Early Birds," Mon grumbled.

"Yes, you're right, Mon, but we have to be flexible too in this trade," Brenda said.

"A whole bottle, Mrs. Brennan?" Mon was still confused.

"Yes, a very poor wine, one of Patrick's few mistakes, sooner it's drunk the better," Brenda said.

They were overjoyed at the table.

"As soon as we get some money, we'll eat here properly," Ella promised.

And they settled down to the plan of war. Should they just murder Frank now, or go to his house and threaten him? Should Nuala find another lover in the next two hours and taunt Frank about it? Should she write him a hurt, sad letter that would break his heart and unsteady his hand for the rest of his working life? None of these things proved to be necessary, because Frank came into the restaurant looking for Nuala. He was greeted with a great deal of hostility by the three girls. He seemed very bewildered. Yet they were ranged against him and there was no way of talking to Nuala alone.

"All right, then," he said, with his face red and almost tearful. "All right, it wasn't what I had planned, but here we go." He knelt down and produced a diamond ring.

I love you, Nuala, and I was waiting for you to give me an indication of whether you would mind coming to England with me. When you were so silent, I thought you wouldn't come with me. Please, do please, marry me."

Nuala stared at him with delight. I thought you didn't love me, that you were leaving me," she began.

"Will you marry me?" he said, almost purple now.

"Frank, you see, I thought you wanted a career more than ..."

A vein was moving dangerously in Frank's forehead.

I was so upset I had even been looking up jobs in London . .."

Ella could bear it no longer. "NUALA, WILL YOU MARRY HIM ... YES OR NO?" she shouted, and the whole restaurant

watched as Nuala said that of course she would, then everyone cheered.

Deirdre and Ella were to be the bridesmaids three months later. "Maybe I might meet my own true love at Nuala's wedding," Ella said to her mother. I'll certainly be hard to miss in this awful tangerine-coloured outfit she has insisted we wear!"

"You look well in anything," Barbara said.

"Come on, Mam, please. We look like two things dressed up to sell petrol in a garage or to give away sweets for a charity."

"Nonsense, you're much too hard on yourself . .."

"Deirdre was saying that again only the other day, she says you both give me everything I want and praise as well, that I'm a spoiled princess."

"Nothing could be further from the truth."

"But Mam, you don't even nag me about not going to Mass."

"Well, I will if you like, but what good would it do? Anyway Father Kenny says we should look after our own souls and not everyone else's."

"It's late that Father Kenny and the Church have decided that, what about the Crusades and the Missions?"

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me that you think poor Father Kenny was personally involved in the Crusades and the Missions," Barbara said with a smile.

"No, of course not, and I will be polite and respectful all during the wedding ceremony, though I think Nuala's crazy to go for the whole church thing."

"So when the time comes for you, we won't have to alert Father Kenny?"

"No, Mam, but by the time the time comes for me, it could be the planet Mars that might be the in place to get married."

Ella didn't meet her true love at Nuala's wedding, but Deirdre did meet and greatly fancied one of Frank's married brothers, who had come over from London for the wedding.

"Oh, Deirdre, please don't. I beg you, put him down," Ella had said.

"What on earth do you mean?" Deirdre's eyes were wide open with innocence.

"I'm worn out covering for you and that fool of the first order, delaying photographs and everything until the bridesmaid comes back dishevelled with one of the ushers, what are you thinking of?"

"It's okay, it's a bit of a laugh. Nuala would laugh too - will laugh, in fact."

"No, Deirdre, you've got it so wrong, that's her brother-in-law now. Someone she'll be seeing with his wife twice a week in London. Nuala won't laugh, and what's more, she won't know."

"Oh, God, you're so disapproving! That's what people do at weddings, that's what weddings are for."

"Adjust your dress, Deirdre, more piccies to be taken." Ella had a voice like steel.

"What do you mean, adjust my dress?"

"Well, pull it down at the back, it's all caught up in your knickers." Ella had the satisfaction of watching Deirdre's worried face as she beat around hopelessly at the back of her dress, which was, as it happened, not caught up at all.

At the wedding, Ella met Nuala's cousin, a woman she had not met for years. She was just about to leave her job as a science teacher; did Ella know anyone looking for a job?

Ella said she'd love the job herself.

"I didn't know you were going to teach," the woman said, surprised.

"Neither did I, until this minute," said Ella.

Her parents were very surprised at the news also. "You know you can go on at university and take more degrees, the money is there for you," her father said, nodding towards the downstairs flat, where the three women bankers were happy to pay for the privilege of living in a good address like Tara Road.

"No, Dad, really, I've been to the school, they're nice. They don't mind I've no experience. They seem to think I'll be able to manage the kids; well, I'm tall physically . .. that's a help, if it comes to arm wrestling," Ella said with a smile.

"You got a good degree as well," her mother reminded her.

"Yeah, well, that helped, I suppose - anyway I just have to do this teaching diploma, which means lectures in the evenings . .. and since the school is over that way near the university, I was thinking . . ." She wondered how to put this to them. That it was time to leave home. They took it very calmly.

"We had wondered if you'd like to live in the basement flat eventually?" Her father was tentative.

"You'd be free to come and go like the bank girls there are," her mother said. "Nobody to bother you or anything."

"It's just the distance, Mam, it's not about people bothering me. You never have."

"You know, days could go by without your having to see us, just like the tenants. And there are big, strong walls .. ."

She knew this was their last plea, then they would give in. "No, I'm not worried about your hearing my wild parties, Dad. Honestly, it's only to make it all quicker and easier. And I'll be at home often, even staying for whole weekends if you want me."

The deal was done.

"I don't believe you, your own place and a room at home, that's pure greed. Why should you get it all, Ella Brady?" Deirdre said.

"Because I'm reliable, that's why," Ella replied. "I'm no trouble. I never have been. That's why I have such an easy life."

And it all did go easily. Ella liked the school, the other young teachers warned her of the pitfalls, the staffroom bores, the danger of getting sucked into campaigns, how to cope with parent-teacher meetings, how to lobby for better equipment for the lab. She liked the children and their enthusiasm. It seemed only the other day that she was in a classroom on the other side of the desk. The lectures were easy too, and she found herself a flat in a leafy road only five minutes from the school.

"I feel free here somehow, independent," Ella explained to Deirdre.

I don't know why you bothered, you got your meals served to you back in your parents" place, and it's not as if you ever brought a bloke in here, by the looks of things."

"How do you know?" Ella laughed.

"Well, have you?"

"No, as it happens, but I might."

"See?" Deirdre was triumphant. "I don't know why you feel so free and independent, I really don't."

And in a way, neither did Ella know. She thought it had something to do with not having to think about her parents" marriage. They were old now, in their sixties, and they still clung to work rather than retire like other people of their age did. They could sell that big house in Tara Road for a fortune and buy a much smaller place. Then Mam would not have to go in anxiously to the law firm where she suspected that she was being kept on I from kindness. Dad would not have to go to what he saw as a changing world of money men.

They got on well together. Surely they did? As she had so often told Deirdre, they never had rows. Suppose they were to turn the house back into apartments, then the rent that would bring in would mean they could retire. She would say nothing yet, just let the idea develop.

She went back home to see them for supper at least once a week and every Sunday as well, but she never stayed over. She said she studied better in the flat. Some months later, she made the suggestion that they should let her room.

Never had anything fallen on such unresponsive ground. They were astounded that she should even think of it. They didn't want to retire. What would they do with their days?

Suddenly Ella's legendary laughter left her. She saw a very bleak future ahead. Imagine what desperate lives people must lead if these two, who were meant to be Happily Married, couldn't even bear the thought of being side by side at home instead of going to jobs which they found tiring and anxiety-creating.

I'd prefer to be a nun than have a dead marriage," Ella told Deirdre very earnestly.

Deirdre worked in a busy laboratory where she knew a great many men.

"You might as well be a nun, the way you live," Deirdre said. In fact, I think you are one in plain clothes." And as time went by Nuala still kept in touch from London. She had decided not to get a job after all, but instead to work in the company as a receptionist. Frank said it was better to keep all the family secrets within the family, she wrote.

"What family secrets does she mean?" Deirdre wondered.

"Probably that her brothers-in-law are screwing everything that moves in there," Ella suggested.

"Very droll." Deirdre still wondered what they could be hiding.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Dee. Remember them at the wedding in their sharp suits and their eyes never still, moving around the room? Those fellows have never known what it was like to keep proper books or pay proper tax in their lives."

"You think all builders are unreliable, that's your prejudice." Deirdre was spirited.

"No, I don't, look at Tom Feather! His family are aboveboard. Lots of them are. It's just Frank's lot make me shudder."

"If you're right, do you suppose they have our pal Nuala drawn into it all?" Deirdre wondered.

"Poor Nuala. I'd just hate to be wrapped up with that lot," Ella said.

"Now funnily enough, I'd find being wrapped up with Eric, that eldest brother, no problem at all," Deirdre laughed.

"You might get your chance, they're going to have a family gathering here in Dublin for Frank's parents. We're invited," Ella read at the end of the letter.

"Great. I'll get one of those suspender belt things."

"No, Deirdre, you won't, it's only three years since the wedding, they won't have forgotten you. We'll keep well away from Frank's family."

The party was very showy. There were even columnists and photographers at it. Frank and his three brothers posed endlessly as an Irish success story. They were photographed with politicians, celebrities, with their parents and their wives.

"It's very fancy for a fortieth wedding anniversary, isn't it... all this razzmatazz. I think that the old folk look a bit bewildered," Deirdre said.

Ella pushed her sunglasses back on her head to study the party more seriously. "No, they're well able for it, the mam and dad, for them it's a triumphal celebration. It's "Look at what a success Our Boys have made in life"."

"Why don't you like them, Ella?"

I don't know, I really don't, to be honest."

"Do you think Nuala's happy?"

I think so, a bit hunted. But she got what she wanted, so I suppose that's happy."

Ella always remembered that remark because just as she was saying it a man beside them was jostled against her by a press photographer. "Please, Mr. Richardson, can we have you in the group?"

"No, thanks all the same, but this is a family party. It's not appropriate."

"It would make sure we got it in the paper?" The camera man was persuasive, but not enough.

"No, thanks, as I said, I'd really much prefer to talk to these two lovely ladies."

Ella turned at the calm, very forceful voice. And she looked Don Richardson, Financial Consultant, whose picture was indeed often in the newspapers. But they had never done him justice. He was good-looking certainly - dark curly hair, blue eyes - but had a way of looking at you that excluded everyone else in the room. Ella knew she hadn't imagined this because out of the corner of her eye she saw Deirdre shrugging slightly and moving away. Leaving her alone with Don Richardson.

Ella had never been able to flirt. Her friend Nick said it was weakness in a woman. Men just loved that come-on look from under the eyelashes. Ella was too up-front he said, lessened the magic somehow. She wished she had listened to Nick. Now for the very first time she wanted to know how to do it.

Even if she had five minutes with Deirdre - but her friend had gone to hover in the danger area of Frank's brothers.

It turned out not to be necessary.

He held out his hand to her with a great smile. "Ella Brady from Tara Road, how are you? I'm Don Richardson. It's such a pleasure to meet you."

"How do you know my name?" she croaked.

"I asked a couple of people, Danny Lynch, the property guy, he told me. He lives near you, apparently."

Ella heard herself saying, "Yes, well, near my parents, actually. I've moved out of home, you see, and I have my own place."

"Why am I very pleased to hear that, Ella Brady?" he asked. He hadn't stopped smiling and he hadn't stopped holding her hand.

Chapter Two.

Ella got home from the hotel somehow on her own. She thought afterwards that she must have taken a taxi, but she didn't remember it. She sat down and looked around her for a long time before she took stock of it all. This was not Happening to her. This was the stuff of silly movies or magazine stories, which had to have the love-at-first-sight theme running through them. Don Richardson was just a known charmer, a professional who made his money by saying Trust Me to people, by holding their hands for a little too long, by letting his eyes lock into theirs. There was obviously a Mrs. Richardson in the room tonight, maybe a history of several of them. There were little Richardsons at home all of whom would need quality time. Ella Brady was not going to go down this road. She had mopped the tears of too many friends who had told her fantasy tales of men who were going to leave their wives. She would not join their number. Women had an amazing capacity to fool themselves, Ella had seen it over and over. She would never be part of it.

He was waiting outside the school next morning. Sitting in a new BMW and smiling as she approached. Ella wished that she had dressed better. But he didn't seem to notice.

"Are you surprised?" he asked.

"Very," she said.

"Can you sit in for a moment? Please," he asked.

"I have to get to class."

She sat in his car. She wanted to make some kind of joke, some

wisecracking remark that would disguise how nervous and excited she felt.

But she decided to say nothing at all. Let him explain what had to be explained.

I'm forty-one years old, Ella, married for eighteen years to Margery Rice, daughter of Ricky Rice, who is theoretically my boss, or at any rate the money in our company. I have two sons aged sixteen and fifteen. Margery and I have a dead marriage - it suits both of us to stay together, at the moment anyway. It certainly suits her father and it suits our two sons. We share a home out in Killiney, by the sea. I also have a business flat in the Financial Services Centre.

"Margery spends most of her day golfing or running charity events. We live entirely separate lives. You would be breaking up nothing, nil, zilch, zero, if you were to say that you would have dinner with me tonight in Quentins at around eight." He put his head on one side as if waiting for her argument.

"I'd like that, see you there," Ella said, and got out of the car. She felt her legs shaking as she went into the staffroom. Ella Brady, who had never taken a class off in her teaching life, went straight to the Principal and said she had to leave the school at lunchtime, it was an emergency. She booked a hair-do, a manicure and a leg wax. She bought fresh flowers for her flat, changed the sheets and tidied the place, examining it with a critical eye. It was probably a wasted effort. But it was wiser to be prepared.

"You got your hair done," he said as she joined him in one of the private booths at Quentins.

"You went home and changed too. Long trek out to Killiney and back," Ella said, smiling.

"Separate lives, Ella, either you believe me or you don't." Don had an extraordinary smile.

"Of course I believe you, Don. Now that that's out of the way, we never have to mention it again."

"And do I have to get anything out of the way? Long-term loves, jealous suitors, possible fiances in the wings?"

"Nothing at all," she said. "Believe me or don't."

"I totally believe you, what a wonderful dinner we are going to have," he said.

The evening passed too quickly. She reminded herself over and over that there must be no brittle jokes about it being time to send him home.

He had dealt with that side of it already. They were meeting as free agents or not at all. He told her about a lunch they'd had in the office today with outside caterers for the first time, and how it must be the hardest job on earth preparing and clearing up after businessmen who all wanted endless vodka and tonics without letting their bosses see just how much they were knocking back.

They were marvellous kids, he said, ran the thing like clockwork, he'd get them more work. Didn't even want to be paid in cash, said they had some accountant who went ballistic over that and everything. Ella said that she thought everyone did.

"Sure they do, of course they do. I was only trying to give these two at Scarlet Feather a break."

"Oh, Scarlet Feather, I know them! Tom and Cathy, they're great people," Ella said, pleased they had someone else in common.

"Yes, they seemed fine. I'd hire them again. They're not going to get rich quick, but that's their business."

He seemed for a moment to think less of them because they weren't going to get rich quick. A shadow came over it all. Maybe Rice and Richardson only liked people who made lots of money.

"How do you know the builders, Eric and his brothers?" she asked.

"Oh, business," he said quickly. "We handle a few investments tor Eric and the boys. And you?"

"My friend Nuala is married to Frank, the youngest brother," she said.

"Some small city. Imagine you knowing that catering couple as well. Anyway, Angel Ella, now tell me about your lunch."

She told him about the elderly teacher who was afraid they would all get radiation from the microwave, and the sports teacher who had lost his front tooth biting into a hard French roll. She told him about the Third Years sending up a petition about school uniform being a danger to girls as they were maturing, since it made them objects of ridicule. None of these things had happened today because Ella had been racing around getting her flat cleaned and her body prepared for what might lie ahead. But as stories they were real incidents from other lunchtimes in the staffroom, and they made him laugh. And with Don Richardson it was going to be important to keep him laughing.

If you wanted to be his friend or whatever there would be no place for moody.

No place at all.

He drove her back to her flat.

"I enjoyed this evening," Don Richardson said.

"Me, too." Her throat was tight and her chest constricted. D she ask him in? They were free agents. Or was it sluttish? Ar why should it be sluttish for the girl, not the man? She would wait and take her timing from him.

"So, since I have your telephone number, maybe we can go again, Angel Ella?" he said. "Yes, please." She kissed his cheek and got out of the car while she still had the strength to do so. He waved and turned the car. She would not spend any time wondering would he drive eleven miles south to Killiney and the dead marriage or one mile north into the city to the bachelor pad. She let herself into the flat and looked accusingly at the vase of expensive fresh flowers she had arranged before she had left. "Fine lure you were to get him back here," she said. The flowers said nothing. Maybe I should get myself a cat or a dog, something that might grunt at me when I come back here alone, Ella thought. But then she might not always be coming back here alone. It was her father's birthday next day. Ella had bought him a gift voucher for a hotel in Co. Wicklow. An old-fashioned place with a big, rambling garden. When she was a child, they sometimes drove down there for Sunday lunch. He used to point out the flowers to her and she would learn the names. Ella remembered her mother smiling a lot there, sitting and pouring out afternoon tea in the garden. Maybe it would be a nice peaceful place for them to go and stay. The voucher covered dinner, bed and breakfast. It could be taken up any time in the next month. Surely they would like that? They loved the idea, both of them. Ella felt tears at the back of her eyes to see such gratitude. "What a wonderful gift, just imagine it," her father said, over and over. Ella wondered why had he never thought of such a thing himself if it was so great. Her mother was delighted too. "The three of us all going down to Holly's and staying the night!" she said. Ella realised with a shock that they thought she was going with them as well. "So when will we go?" Her father was excited now like a child. "A Friday or a Saturday?" she suggested. She couldn't ruin it all now by explaining that she hadn't meant to come with them. "You choose," Father said. Don wouldn't ask her out on a Saturday, that would surely be family time.

They fixed to go the following Saturday. Just as Ella was about to call the hotel and make the booking her mobile phone rang.

"Hallo," Don Richardson said.

She noted that he hadn't said his name. It was arrogant in a way to assume that she knew who it was. But she was no good at playing games.

"Oh, hallo," she said pleasantly.

"Is it okay to talk?" he asked.

"Oh, it's always okay," Ella said, but she got up and moved out towards the spiral steps down to the garden at the same time. She gave an apologetic shrug to her parents as if this were a duty call

she had to take.

"I wondered if you'd like to have dinner Saturday?"

She looked behind her into the sitting-room. Her parents were examining the brochure for Holly's as if it were some kind of map of a treasure trove. She could not cancel it now.

Ella held on to the wrought-iron rail. "I'm so sorry, but I've just arranged something, literally in the last few minutes, and it would of a bit difficult, you see, to . .."

He cut her off.

Never mind, it was on the off chance, there'll be other evenings."

He was about to go. She knew she must not begin to burble at mi", but she was so very anxious to keep him on the line. I wish I didn't have to . . ."

But you have," he said crisply before she could cancel her parents" outing and go with him wherever he suggested. "So catch you again." And he was gone.

All during dinner her heart felt like a stone. And later, she helped her mother with the washing up and they had the most extraordinary conversation.

"Ella, you couldn't have done anything that would please your

father more, it's just what he needs. He's been very pressured at work."

"Then why didn't you take him to Holly's, Mother?" Ella hoped

her tone was not as impatient as she felt inside. Her mother looked at her, amazed.

"But what would we have done there together, just the two of us looking at each other? We might as well just stay here looking at each other if there was to be just the two of us."

Ella looked at her mother in shock. "You can't mean that, Mam?"

"Mean what?" Her mother was genuinely surprised.

"That you don't have anything to talk about with Dad."

"But what is there to talk about, haven't we said it all?" Her mother spoke as if this were the most glaringly obvious thing in the world.

"But if that's the way it is, why don't you leave him, why don't you separate?" Ella stood with the dinner plate in her hand. Her mother took it away from her.

"Oh, Ella, don't be ridiculous, why on earth would we want to do that? I never heard of such nonsense."

"People do, Mam."

"Not people like me and your dad. Come back inside now and we'll talk about this great visit to Holly's."

Ella felt as if a light warm woollen blanket had been put over her head and was beginning to suffocate her.

She went to the cinema with Deirdre and for a drink afterwards. They talked normally as always. Or so Ella thought. Then Deirdre ordered another drink and asked Ella, "They're serving sandwiches. Do you want one?"

"What?" Ella said. "Oh, yes, whatever."

Til get you one with mouse's dirt and bird droppings in it, then," Deirdre said cheerfully.

"What?"

"Oh, good. Welcome back, you're awake again," Deirdre laughed.

I don't know what you mean."

"Ella, you saw none of the movie, you haven't said a word to me, you've bitten your lip and shuffled about. Are you going to tell me or are you not?"

She had told Deirdre everything since they were thirteen, but she couldn't. It was odd, there was too much to tell and too little. Too much in that she had fallen in love with an entirely wrong man and that her own parents" thirty-year marriage, which she had always thought was very happy, was fairly empty. And yet too little to tell. To Deirdre it would all be simple. She would say that Ella should go for the man, married or not. Take what she wanted and not get hurt. And Deirdre would say that everyone's parents had rotten marriages, it's just the way things were.

"Nothing, Dee, just fussing, ruminating, being neurotic .. . that's all it is, honestly."

"That's all it ever is, honestly, but you always tell me," Deirdre grumbled.

"You've got such a great, uncomplicated way of looking at things. I'm envious."

"No, you're not, you think I'm sexually indiscriminate, that I have a hard heart .. . come on, you're not envious."

I am. Tell me of your latest drama, whatever it was."

"Well, I had a great session with that Don Richardson, you know, the consultant guy you see all over the papers. Very good he is too, insatiable nearly."

Deirdre held her head on one side and watched Ella's face. After a few seconds she was contrite. "Ella, you clown, I was just joking."

Ella said nothing. She had both hands on her head as if trying to clear it.

"Ella! I didn't, I never even met him, you silly thing, I was only on a fishing expedition to see if that's who you fancied."

Ella took her hands away from her face.

"And it seems as if I was right," Deirdre said.

"How did you know?" Ella's voice was a whisper.

"Because I'm your best friend, and also because you couldn't take your eyes off him when he came up to you at Nuala's do the other night."

"Was that only the other night?" Ella was amazed.

"Will I get a half-bottle of wine?" Deirdre suggested.

"Get a full bottle," Ella said, some of the colour coming back to her face. The next Saturday the Bradys left Tara Road in the middle of the afternoon so that they could take a tour of Wicklow Gap before going to Holly's. Ella was determined to do it well if she was doing it at all. Give them a day and night out to remember. Oddly, Deirdre had seemed highly approving that she had refused the date with Don for Saturday night. To have agreed would make Ella too available. He would call again, mark Deirdre's words, she knew about such things. Ella had brought a flask of coffee and three little mugs and they stood in the afternoon sunshine to admire the scenery. There was bright yellow gorse on the bare hills, and some flashes of deep purple heather. Here and there a thin vague looking sheep wandered as if bemused that there wasn't more green grass for them to eat.

"Imagine, you can't see a house or a building anywhere and yet be so near Dublin, isn't it amazing?" Ella said.

"Like the Yorkshire Moors. I was there once," her father said.

Ella hadn't known that. "Were you there too, Mam?"

"No, before my time." She sounded clipped.

"It's a bit like Arizona too, all that space, except it's red desert over there," Ella said. "Remember the time you gave me the money for the Greyhound Bus Tour? When Deirdre and I went off to see the world."

"You were twenty-one," her mother remembered.

"And you sent us a postcard every three days," her father said.

"You were very generous. I saw so much that I'll never forget, thanks to you. Deirdre had to work for the money and borrow some, I don't think she's paid it all back yet."

"Why have a child if you can't give her a holiday?" Barbara Brady's lips were pursed with disapproval of those who didn't take parenting seriously.

"And what is money when all is said and done?" said Tim Brady, who had spent all his working hours, weeks and years, advising people about money and nothing else.

Ella was mystified. But she remembered Deirdre's advice about not killing herself trying to understand them, there was probably nothing to understand.

Holly's Hotel was buzzing with people, most of them having driven from Dublin for dinner. But the Brady family had their rooms, time to stroll in the gardens, have a leisurely bath and then meet in the chintzy little bar for a sherry while looking at the menu.

"I must say, this is a marvellous treat," her father said over and over.

"You are such a thoughtful girl," her mother would murmur in agreement.

Ella told them that she loved looking at people in restaurants and imagining stories about them. Like that couple near the window, for example, they were drug pushers back in Dublin, just come for a nice respectable weekend to know what the Other World was like.

"Are they?" Her mother was alarmed.

"Of course not," Ella said. "It's only pretend. Look at that group over there - what do you think they are?"

Slowly her parents got drawn into the game. "The older couple is trying to get the younger ones to go halves in buying a boat," said Tim Brady.

"The younger couple is telling the older ones that they"re bankrupt and asking for a loan," said Barbara Brady.

"I think it's a group sex thing, they all answered one of Miss Holly's ads for wife-swapping weekends," Ella suggested.

And they were all laughing at the whole crazy notion of it in this of all places when Ella looked up and saw Don Richardson and his family being ushered from the bar into the dining-room. He looked over and saw them at that moment. It would be frozen for ever in Ella's mind. The Bradys all laughing at one table and Don at the door holding it open for his father-in-law, his sons aged sixteen and fifteen, and his wife Margery who only lunched for charities and otherwise played golf. Margery, who was not large, weather-beaten and distant-looking, but who wore a smart red silk suit and had one of those handbags which cost a fortune. Margery, who was petite, smiled up at her husband in a way that Ella would never be able to do since she was exactly the same height.

Ella's father was very engaged by the menu. Would smoked trout salad be too heavy a starter if he was going to have Guinness, steak and oyster pie?

Ella wondered if she might possibly be going to faint. Was this a sign that since she had refused to go out with him Don had decided to play the rare role of family man? Was this self-delusion of the worst kind? Did he think less of her for being with her parents? Or quite possibly more? Would he acknowledge her in the dining room? Ella ordered absently and chose the wine. It was too late now to ask if they could eat upstairs in the bedroom. She had to face it.

In the dining room they were quite a distance from the Richardson party and it was the two teenage boys and their grandfather who faced them, the couple with the dead marriage had their backs to the Bradys.

Ella's parents were still playing the "let's imagine" game about people. The two women over there were planning a shoplifting spree, her mother thought, or they were discussing putting their father into an old people's home. Ella's father thought they had hacked into a computer and made a fortune and were wondering how to spend it.

"What do you think, Ella?"

She had been thinking about the body language of Don and Margery Richardson as they sat together easily. They were not stroking each other or hand-holding but they didn't have that stiffness that couples often have when there is a distance. Like her own parents had. Every night except tonight when they seemed to be very relaxed.

"Go on, Ella, what do you think they are?"

She glanced briefly at the two retired women who obviously treated themselves out to a meal and a gossip twice a year.

"Lesbians planning which of them should be inseminated this time," she said, forgetting she was talking to her parents rather than to Deirdre. To her surprise they thought it was very funny and when Don turned around slightly to look for her as she had H known he would, there they were all laughing again. Ella felt a H touch of hysteria. She wanted to stand up and scream to the whole restaurant that at best life was just one ludicrous, hypocritical facade. But you'd need to be a brave person to lose control at Miss Holly's. Ella thought that he would say hallo, stop by the table and say something smooth and pleasant. Just be prepared for it and behave accordingly. Nothing glib or too smart.

Her father removed his glasses and seemed pleased to be able to identify at least one of the fellow diners. "My goodness, that's Ricky Rice, of Rice and Richardson Consultants," he said.

"Oh, do you know them, Dad?" she asked, her mouth hardly able to form the words.

"No, no, not at all, but we all know of them. Dear Lord, do they have clients," he said, shaking his head with envy.

"How did they get such great business, do you think?" Her mother was peering over at the table.

"Know all the right people apparently," her father shrugged, his face defeated and sad.

Ella was determined to raise the mood. She asked them about property prices in Tara Road. One house there had sold for a fortune recently.

"Didn't you do well to buy a house there, Dad?" she said.

"We wanted a place with a nice garden for you to grow up," her mother said. "And wasn't it marvellous? Still is, of course."

"But you don't live there any more," her father said.

"No, Dad, not full-time, but I'll come back and see you as I will always do while you're there, or wherever you are."

"What do you mean, wherever we are?" Her mother sounded very anxious.

Please, please, may he not look around again now and see them all frowning and anxious. "I meant, Mam, that some day you'll want to sell Tara Road and buy a smaller place, won't you? Won't you?" She looked from one to the other eagerly.

"We hadn't ever thought . . ." her father began.

"Why should we leave our home?" her mother said.

"You know that guy Danny Lynch who used to live in Tara Road? He says this is the time to sell."

"Well, he left his wife and children - he's no role model," her mother said.

"No, but he is an estate agent."

"Not any longer." Her father spoke gravely. "Apparently he and his partner got into a lot of funny business," he said very disapprovingly.

"And anyone who would cheat on his wife like he did isn't worth listening to on any subject," Ella's mother said.

There was a movement two tables away. Ella saw him stand up. She knew he was coming over. Make them laugh, she told herself.

It was a tall order. She had about thirty seconds.

"Don't mind me, Deirdre says that I'm obsessed by property. That's another game I play, I pretend houses aren't what they seem to be. Apart from Holly's Hotel here being the wife swapping centre of Europe, I think Mam's law office is money laundering big time. And wait till I tell you what I think Dad's firm is up to .. ." She stopped just as he arrived at the table. It had worked, they were both looking at her with eager smiles to know what she would say next.

"Hallo, I'm Don Richardson. We met at Frank and Nuala's party this week."

"Oh, that's right. Don, these are my parents, Tim and Barbara Brady."

His handshake was so firm, his tone so warm, she felt nothing but gratitude to him. He was being so genuinely pleasant to two strangers. He was not speaking to this couple as a man who was about to seduce their daughter, betray his wife; she saw him as someone who had come to rescue the conversation. She explained it was her father's birthday; he explained that it was a celebration because his son had scored a winning goal in a match. In the few short moments that he stayed he managed to discover the name of, and praise, her father's firm, he even knew of the office where her mother worked when it was mentioned and said they were highly respected lawyers. And then he was gone.

They spoke of him admiringly.

"Very hard-working man. That's why he got where he is. People used to say it was all his father-in-law but the firm was nothing until he got into it," her father said.

"And very easy with people too," her mother said.

Ella felt it was very foolish to be as pleased as she was that they liked him. And she felt very pleased indeed at the way he smiled at her as he left the dining-room. She knew he was going to call her again soon. But she hadn't known that he would call her at midnight.

"I hope I didn't wake you," he said on her mobile phone.

"No. I was reading, there's a kind of window seat here, I was actually looking at the shapes of the bushes and flowers more than reading."

"Bushes? Flowers? Where are you?" He sounded confused.

"How quickly men forget. I'm in Holly's, we met here about four hours ago."

In Holly's?" He sounded very disappointed.

"Don, you know I am. Is this a game?"

If so, I've lost," he said.

"Where are you? she asked.

"I'm parked in your road. I was hoping you'd ask me in for coffee."

"So your son's celebration is over?"

"And your father's continues?"

"That's life, I suppose." She was smiling now, he was outside her door back in Dublin. He had not gone back to his Killiney home with the wife in red silk. His ties to his home must be very loose, as he had said. He had driven all the way in to Dublin on the off chance of seeing her. He must fancy her.

"You could come in for coffee another night. Like tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow's bad for me - a big political fund-raiser - I have to be there glad-handing people." He sounded regretful.

"Oh, well." She made herself shrug.

"Monday night?" he offered.

Deirdre had told her not to be too available. "Bad for me, Tuesday or Wednesday are fine, though."

"Tuesday then, I suppose, since it can't be earlier. Suppose I brought a bottle of truly lovely wine, would you cook me a steak?"

"It's a deal," said Ella, who wondered how could any human get through the number of hours between now and Tuesday at eight o"clock. They had the Full Irish Breakfast, and Miss Holly came to talk to them. "Nice to meet Don Richardson last night." Ella's mother wanted to show that they were anyone's equal.

"Ah, yes, wonderful family man, Mr. Richardson," said Miss Holly, nodding in approval. "You see it all in this business, Mrs. Brady, believe me, so many of our so-called business leaders don't have the same standards as they used to, no indeed."

"Brings his family here a lot then, does he?" said Ella in a strained voice, stabbing at the sausage on her plate as if she wanted desperately to kill it.

"Well, no, he works so hard, you see. Usually it's just his wife and her father and the children, but Mr. Richardson always rings and orders them some special wine, and when he can he's with them."

"That's nice," said Ella, suddenly feeling a great deal better.

She kissed them goodbye at Tara Road and refused to think about the fact that they might spend a lonely wordless afternoon now that she was no longer there to be the central point of their life. She had done her best to get them to sell this big place. To liberate some money so that they could go on a cruise, get a better car or whatever they might like. She knew that it wouldn't matter where they lived or how much money they had, they were not going to take their future in their own hands and make the best of it. Which was what she, Ella, was going to do. She was going to get involved with this dangerously attractive man, no matter how many turnings there would be in the road ahead. And if she got hurt then she got hurt, that's all there was to it.

Her phone rang . She pulled in to the side of the road but it wasn't what she had hoped. It was Nick, her old mate from college.

"Oh, Nick," she said.

"Well, I've had warmer receptions," he said.

"Sorry, I'm coping with traffic," she lied. "No, you're not, you fibber, you've pulled in, I'm in the car behind you." "Is this a police state or what?" she said and leaped out of the car to give him a hug. "I saw you ahead of me and I wondered if you'd like a late lunch."

"Like it? I'd love it, Nick."

They sat companionably as he told her all about the dramas in his life and she told him nothing about the dramas in hers. Nick was such an easy person to talk to, such a friend. No need to explain anything or wonder about what he was thinking. It was all there on his handsome, freckled face and in his big green eyes. He was wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses on his head. It would have been so uncomplicated to love someone like this instead of what she had got herself into. She looked at Nick affectionately. He would never know what she was thinking.

When they had last met he had just set up a small independent film production company called Firefly Films with two others and they were doing quite well. Much better than they had hoped. They still did a fair bit of bread and butter work like videos of weddings and advertising things, a lot of word of mouth. That's what it was all about in Dublin today - Nick had been able to point a job to Tom and Cathy who ran a catering company called Scarlet Feather. And apparently it had gone well so now Tom and Cathy in return had got him a job to film and edit a big fundraising event tonight. Huge money, the guy wanted to pay in cash but, hey, that was okay too.

"Tonight?" Ella's eyes were dancing.

"Yeah, he wants a nice, neat fifteen minutes of the highlights showing as many celebs as possible and literally just the best sound bites, no long tedious speeches . .. we could do it in our sleep." "Nick, can I come with you? To help. Please." "Hey, Ella, you don't want to be involved in any of this kind of business!" Nick was startled. "Please. I beg you. I'll get you coffee, I'll carry your bags." "Why?"

"I just want to, we're friends. You wanted to have lunch with me and I said yes, why can't I say I want to go on this gig with you tonight and you say yes?"

"You'd be bored."

"Please, Nick."

"Okay, but you do get to carry my bags, do you hear?"

"I love you, Nick."

"You love someone certainly; you're as high as a kite," he said. "But it's not me." She met them outside the hotel later in the evening. She hardly recognised Nick, he "was so businesslike and efficient.

"This is Ella. She knows nothing but she's here to help," he said casually.

Ella grinned. "I always wanted to be in movies," she said, joking.

"Well, you picked the wrong team, tonight's only video," said a small, earnest-looking girl who did not at all like the tall, blonde Ella coming in on the act.

"Look, I promise I won't be in the way." Ella concentrated on the girl, the two men were no trouble and couldn't have cared less about her. "Just tell me what to do or to get out of the way and I'll do it."

"Well, okay, thanks then." The girl was gruff.

"What's your name?" Ella asked. "Sandy."

"Well, Sandy, I mean it, anything I can do?"

"Why are you here?" Sandy was blunt. She fancied Nick greatly and probably in vain. But as far as she was concerned, Ella was a threat.

"Because I'm keen on someone who's going to be here and it was the only way I could get in." There is never anything as good as total honesty.

Sandy believed her immediately.

"And is he keen on you?"

"Not enough," Ella answered, and they were friends for life.

She tidied away their gear into corners, got a pot of coffee from the kitchen, asked the office to let them have three photocopies of the seating plan rather than the one they had been given. And was in fact quite useful and helpful until she saw Don Richardson come in with Margery on his arm.

This time she wore dark green silk and what looked very like real emeralds. She knew everyone and they were all kissing her on the cheek. Today was a Sunday yet she looked as if she had come straight from the hairdresser, she must have somebody come to her house. She was like a little porcelain doll. Ella felt tall, ungainly, sweaty, and out of place. From behind a pillar she watched as Don spoke swiftly to Nick telling him what needed to be done, where to position himself. And then she did no more to help anyone in Firefly Films, she stood there twisting a table napkin around in her hands and watching Don Richardson. He had said tonight was bad for him to meet her because he had to do a lot of glad-handing.

She wasn't even sure what the words meant.

Now she knew. It was shaking hands and at the same time gripping the other person's arm firmly above the elbow. It was looking into their eyes and thanking them for their support. It was turning to introduce them to other people with a fixed smile of gratitude. And Don Richardson did it very well.

Ella had no idea how long she stood there while others in the great dining room ate through a five-course meal. But Don didn't sit down either, he moved from table to table, talking here, laughing there, always nodding imperceptibly at Nick if he wanted him to turn the camera on groups. Margery sat at a table and talked easily with politicians and their wives. Margery's eyes never roamed the room looking for him, wondering was he hesitating too long at this table, laughing too animatedly with the two bosomy women who did not want to let him go. Was this because she knew how to play it? Giving him a long lead meant he always came home? Or had he been telling Ella the truth, that they really did lead separate lives?

There was dancing now, but Firefly Films" work was over. Don Richardson hadn't wanted to film any red-faced groping on the dance floor. The party supporters would want to see a video of themselves looking decorous, mixing with the party leader, with cabinet ministers and celebrities. That's what Nick and Ed and Sandy were going back to the office to do now, edit the video and copy it for Don Richardson. It had to be in his office next day by lunchtime. It would mean working all night.

"I don't suppose you're going to come and help us some more back at base, Ella," Nick said, without any hope.

I'd love to," she said guiltily. "It's just I have school tomorrow morning, you see."

"Why did I know you were going to say that?" Nick gave her a brotherly pat on the behind.

Sandy wasn't jealous any more. As they packed away the equipment, she whispered to Ella, "Did you see him?"

"Yes, I saw him."

"Did he see you?" Still a whisper.

"No, no he didn't."

"Are you glad or sorry you came?" Sandy had to know. Again total truth is very satisfying.

"A bit of both, to be honest," Ella Brady said, and slipped out the back way before she might see Don Richardson hold out his hand and ask his tiny, emerald-wearing, estranged wife to dance.

She got a taxi home and stayed awake until 5 a.m. After two hours she woke groggy and bad-tempered. And when she got to her class, she didn't feel any better. "If you know what's good for all of us, you lot must be no trouble today," she warned the Fifth Years, who were inclined to be difficult.

"Was it a heavy night, Miss Brady?" asked Jacinta O'Brien, one of the more fearless troublemakers.

Ella strode so purposefully towards the girl's desk that the class gasped.

Miss Brady couldn't be about to hit a pupil, surely? But that's what it looked like. Ella stood, her face inches from the child's. "There's always one in every class, Jacinta, one smart-arse who goes too far and ruins it for everyone. In this class you are the one. I was going to treat you like adults, tell you the truth - which is that I didn't sleep and don't feel too well. I was going to ask for your co-operation so that I could give you as good a lesson as possible.

"But no, there's always the smart-arse, so instead we will have a test. Get out your papers this minute."

Ella gave them four questions, and then she sat there trembling at her outburst. She had said smart-arse. Twice.

This wasn't the kind of school where you said that.

She had meant to say smart aleck. Oh, God, why couldn't it be Tuesday? Then she could see Don Richardson that night.

But she got through the day and was relieved to get home.

I understand you've started stalking him now," Deirdre said on the phone that night.

"How did you hear that?" Ella gasped.

"It was in one of the gossip columns. I can't remember which," Deirdre said. As usual Ella fell for it.

"What?"

"Oh, shut up, Ella. I met Nick. He told me you wanted to crash Don's big fund-raiser with him."

Ella began to breathe again.

"Some capital city this is, you can't do anything," she grumbled.

"Well, you haven't done anything, have you?" Deirdre reminded her.

"No. Tomorrow night," Ella said. "It would have been tonight, but I remembered what you said about not being too available."

"Can we meet lunchtime Wednesday?" asked Deirdre.

"No, that's my short lunch ... it will have to wait till after work."

"Early Bird Quentins? My treat?" Deirdre offered.

"Early Bird starts at six-thirty. I'll be there," Ella promised. There was an old clock on a church tower near Ella's flat. It was just striking eight when he knocked on the door. I'm boringly punctual," he said. He carried a briefcase, an orchid and a bottle of wine.

I'm just delighted to see you," Ella said simply. There was something about the way she said it that made him put down everything on the table and take her in his arms.

"Ella, Angel Ella, I'm never going to hurt you or be bad for you in any way."

There was a catch in his voice as he spoke into her hair. "Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you, believe me."

And as she looked at him before she kissed him properly, Ella knew this was true.

They put the orchid in a long narrow vase, and got about the business of preparing dinner. He sliced the mushrooms, she made the salad. They had a glass of cold white wine from her fridge. And he opened the bottle of red he had brought before they sat down in the most normal and natural way, as if this was where they had always lived. She didn't ask him would he stay the whole night because she knew he would. They talked easily. He said he had enjoyed meeting her parents.

"They liked meeting you, too, but I expect everyone does," Ella said.

"Does that mean you think I'm putting on some kind of an act?" he asked, hurt.

"No, I don't think it does, you do like people, and you make them feel as if there's no one else in the room. It's just the way you are ... even now."

He looked round her flat. "Come on, there is no one else in the room!" he said, laughing.

"No, it's a way you have, I expect you were great at the fund-raiser thing on Sunday." Her eyes were bright.

"I don't know," Don Richardson said thoughtfully. "People had been generous, I was just thanking them, making them feel that they weren't being taken for granted, that the Party appreciated them. It wasn't meant to be all smarmy, just gratitude."

"Glad-handing," she said, remembering his words.

"Yes, I was sending myself up when I said that, it's just that I would have preferred to be with you."

"You were very good at it, I saw you," Ella said suddenly. She didn't know why she had made this admission. Possibly because she wanted no lies, no pretending. To her amazement he just nodded at her.

"Yes, I saw you, too," he said.

She felt her face redden with shame. He had actually spotted her stalking him as Deirdre described it.

"Nick, the guy who did the video, he's a mate of mine. He wanted some help."

"Sure."

"Actually he didn't want any help, I just asked if I could come along too."

"Did you, Ella? Why?" His hand rested on top of hers, lightly.

"I just wanted to see you, Don, I was very sorry too that we weren't meeting that night, to go to the do was the next best thing."

He stood up and held her face in his hands and kissed her. "I didn't dare to believe that might be true, Ella. I've thought about it over and over since then and prayed it was true."

"And would you ever have said that you'd seen me?"

"No, it was your business that you were there, I'd never interrogate you. Never."

"You were very good, Don, you were tireless."

"No, I was very tired, I drove past this house on the way back to my flat, I saw your lights on and realised you were home .. . but . .."

"But what?" she asked.

"But our date was for tonight. I didn't want to look foolish and overeager."

Her eyes had tears in them as she led him away from the table and to the bedroom. And it was everything that it had never been before, with Nick or with the sporting hero or the two one-night stands. Ella lay in his arms long after Don had gone to sleep. She was the luckiest woman in the world.

Next morning, she just offered him coffee and orange juice, and didn't fuss about breakfast. He seemed to like the lack of fuss. Possibly Margery and the boys made too much noise and crowded him out. Ella would never be like that.

She picked up a package of papers to take to school.

"What are they?" he asked, interested.

"Oh, I gave the Fifth Years a test yesterday. The good side of that is you have forty minutes" peace while they do it, the bad side is you have to mark thirty-three extra papers."

He kissed her on the nose.

"I know nothing of your life, Ella Brady," he said.

"Probably better to keep it that way, in case you keel over and die of boredom," she said.

"You couldn't bore me." He sounded very serious. "May I come back tonight, a bit late-ish?"

I'd love that," Ella said. She had been forcing herself not to ask when they would meet again.

"I'm not tying up your evening on you?" He was solicitous.

"No, I'm meeting Deirdre for an early supper at Quentins. I'll be back by nine. Does that suit?"

"I'll be here around ten, I'll have eaten a very dull and sober dinner ... a financial committee. I have to take notes and be alert so maybe I could drink a glass of wine or two with you?"

She gave a little shiver. Don Richardson who had homes in Killiney, in the Financial Centre and in Spain, was going to stay in her little flat two nights running. Last night in bed he had told her he loved her. It looked as if he meant it. Ella managed to get through the day, and when she arrived at Quentins, Deirdre was waiting.

"Are you going to tell me everything?" Deirdre demanded before Ella said hallo.

"Not as much as you'll want to know, but I'll tell you a fair bit."

"Tell me the main thing, the only thing, is he coming back for more?" Deirdre asked.

"He's going to stay the night tonight as well, yes."

"He stayed the whole night. Oh my God!" cried Deirdre in such a loud voice that everyone in the restaurant looked over at their table.

"Thanks, Dee," hissed Ella. "Why didn't you ask for a microphone, then even the faraway tables could have heard you."

"No worries." They were consoled by Mon, the young waitress whom they both knew and liked. She had told them in the past about her unerring bad taste in men back in Australia, and how she had lost her heart and all her savings to a fellow in Italy. Deirdre and Ella had been sympathetic and said that it was pretty much a global problem. Men were the cause of most of the unrest and unease on the planet.

Mon had recently found a new love, she had confided. He was older and wiser and trustworthy. His name was Mr. Harris.

Had he a first name? they wondered. He had, apparently, but Mon liked to think of him as Mr. Harris at the moment.

"I hope your Mr. Harris isn't here to be shocked by my loudmouth friend Dee," Ella said in a low voice. "No, he's not, and he wouldn't be shocked, but tell me, did that guy with the gorgeous smile and the dark blue eyes really stay the whole night?" Mon whispered.

"Dee, I will stab you very hard with something," Ella said.

"No, don't stab her. No one heard except me and, anyway, the others are all tourists. It doesn't matter if they did," said Mon cheerfully. Don stayed that night and the next. On Friday morning he said he was going to Spain for a few days.

I wish I didn't have to."

"Enjoy it," Ella managed to say. She didn't ask if it were business or family. She didn't want to know. But he told her.

"I look after a lot of property interests out there. I need to go out at least once a month, not a hardship posting, I agree. Sometimes the boys come if it's half-term or when they can get a day or two off school. But not this time. Still, I'll be back next

Wednesday and maybe we can go out for a meal. I don't want you getting tired of cooking for me."

"I enjoy it, Don, truly I do, and perhaps, you know, it's wiser not to be out in public in the circumstances."

He looked surprised. "Honestly Angel, I told you there's no problem, it's separate lives." He said it so often it had to be true.

But the next day some torment made her call the Richardson home in Killiney and ask to speak to Mrs. Margery Richardson. She was prepared to hang up when the woman came to the phone.

"I'm afraid she's not here," said the housekeeper. "She's gone to Spain. She'll be back on Wednesday." "Nick? It's Deirdre."

"Oh, I know, Deirdre. You want to join Firefly Films," he said.

"No, I don't, but I'm worried about Ella."

"Join the club."

"No, seriously. She's not herself, Nick."

"When are any of us ourselves?"

"Stop being flippant, it's not funny. This guy Don Richardson, where is he at the moment?"

"He's gone to Spain. He ordered another dozen videos, to be ready when he gets back. Main thing, he seemed pleased with them."

"That's not the main thing, Nick, the main thing is ... Ella is miserable. Did he say it was business or going with the family?"

"How would I know? And what difference does it make?"

"So why is Ms Brady throwing herself off O'Connell Bridge?"

"No!" Nick cried.

"It's a figure of speech, she just won't be consoled."

"Oh Jesus, this love business is terrible," Nick said sympathetically.

"Tell me about it, Nick! I'm so glad I never bought into it myself," said Deirdre. "It's wonderful that Ella came to us for a whole long weekend," Tim Brady said. "Imagine, she's going to stay here until Tuesday."

"Yes," said his wife.

"Aren't you pleased, Barbara?"

"I'd be much more pleased if she hadn't asked us to say she isn't here and we have no idea where she is," Ella's mother said.

"She says she wants to cut herself off a bit from the world, have a rest." Her father believed the story.

"Yes, but some man has rung four times. He says her mobile is turned off, he's getting anxious and annoyed."

"Trust Ella, it may just be some fellow she doesn't want to encourage. Does he say who he is?"

"No, and I don't ask him," Barbara Brady said.

On Sunday the man on the phone did say who he was. "Mrs. Brady, it's Don Richardson here, we had the pleasure of meeting briefly in Holly's Hotel last week ... I am most anxious to talk to Ella. I wonder if you could ask her to call me? I can give you the number."

"Oh, yes, of course, Mr. Richardson, I remember. Nice to talk to you again."

"Yes, so if she's there ... I wonder . .."

"No, unfortunately she's not at home." Barbara Brady hated telling lies. She knew she wasn't very good at it either.

"But she will be back sometime, won't she? I mean, you will see her, won't you?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Barbara Brady said too quickly.

He dictated his telephone number and thanked her.

"Ella?" Barbara Brady knocked on her daughter's bedroom door. "May I come in?"

"Sure, Mam."

Ella sat hugging a cushion and rocking to and fro. She was red eyed, but not actually crying.

"Don Richardson called again." Her mother's voice was clipped. "This time he left his name and number. He said that he was in Spain and I told him that I would give you the message and the number."

"Thanks, Mam."

"And are you having any supper?"

"No, Mam."

"Or any plans to tell your father and myself what's going on?"

"None at all, Mam."

Til leave you to your thoughts then."

"I love you, Mam."

"Three easiest words to say in the whole world, "I love you"."

"But I do!" Ella was stung.

"We will be downstairs when you love us enough to join us," her mother said with her mouth in a very hard line.

"I don't suppose she could be involved with this Don Richardson?" Barbara said to her husband in a low, frightened voice.

Ella's father was shocked. "He's a married man, Barbara, married to Ricky Rice's daughter."

"Of course, she couldn't be so foolish."

Ella had come to the top of the stairs and heard this. She went back to her room and stared ahead of her for a long time. It was inconvenient keeping her mobile phone turned off but she didn't want to get any messages from him, and she kept the phone in her flat off the hook, too. She had forgotten about the school. There were two dozen red roses for her there on Monday.

"Stop hiding, I love you," was the message.

Everyone in the staffroom had read it before she did. Their eyes were on her as she looked at the card.

"Oh, I never knew the Fifth Years cared so much," she said with a laugh.

As she left the room Ella heard them talking about her. "They must have cost a fortune, seventy to eighty euros," said one. "Bet he's married, otherwise he'd have put his name on the card," said another.

Ella gritted her teeth and got down to work. She wouldn't have to think about him until Wednesday night. If he showed up.

He knocked at her door at 8 p.m. on Wednesday. He had no flowers, no wine.

"Hallo Don."

"What's all this about?"

"I don't understand," she said.

"Neither do I. I said goodbye to you here on Friday morning, I told you I loved you, you told me you loved me. Then I went to Spain on business and suddenly you won't take my calls and get your mother to lie for you. What's going on, Ella?"

I don't know. What is going on?" she said.

"You tell me. I've been straight up all the way, you're the one playing games." He looked very angry.

They were still on the doorstep.

"You have not been straight. You didn't tell me you were taking your wife to Spain." Ella let the words tumble out.

I took "my wife", as you call her, nowhere!" he shouted.

"Your "wife is what she is," Ella cried.

I don't care. I will go the distance here on the doorstep, but on mature reflection, as they say, you may prefer to do it indoors," he said.

Wearily she opened the door.

He marched into her sitting room as if he owned it and sat down. "Okay Ella, tell me," he began.

"No, you tell me. You said you were going to Spain on business and then I hear that you took your wife."

"And how do you hear this, Ella?"

"It's not important, you did take her."

"I did not take her, she decided to come at the same time, she owns half the house."

"But you didn't tell me that she was going."

"I didn't bloody know until she said she was going and anyway, it's not important. I don't have to tell you, you agreed to accept that we lived separate lives. You told me you agreed, that you believed that." He looked bewildered and upset.

"Huh," she said.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Ella said truthfully.

"You said it, so you must know. What do you mean? What are you asking me?"

There was a silence.

"What do you want to know?" he asked again.

Another silence and then she spoke. "Did you sleep with her? Do you still have sex with her?" Ella's voice was low.

Don Richardson stood up. His face was working, she had never seen him so upset. "I'm sorry, Ella, I'm really sorry. I thought I had made it all clear, I really thought I had come and told you the whole situation outside your school that day."

"Yes, but .. ." she began.

"And I thought you said that you understood."

"I thought I did but .. ."

"But you don't understand at all, you actually think that I could love you and have sex with Margery, you really do think that, don't you?"

"I think it's possible, yes."

"Then you and I, we haven't much more to talk about, Ella, my angel, have we?" he said sadly.

"Do you?" she asked.

"Do I what?"

"Do you have sex with her?"

"Goodbye, Ella," he said, moving towards the door.

"So it's yes," she said in a heavy tone.

"It's no actually, but it doesn't matter. I won't stay where there's such suspicion. Someone must have hurt you very badly somewhere along the line to make you feel hurt and anxious like this."

"Bullshit, Don Richardson, nobody hurt me before, nobody touched me before, I never loved anyone before. There's no mythical villain. You tell me it's a business trip and then I hear your wife is with you, what's so abnormal about being upset? Don't make me into some kind of freak."

"And how exactly did you hear, might I ask?" His voice was ice cold.

It was the end. Ella knew it. "Not that it matters, but I called your house, and I was told that the lady of the manor was in Spain." Another silence,

"Thanks, Ella, thanks for everything, thanks for coming to spy at the fund-raiser, thanks for calling to check on my family's movements, thanks for jumping to conclusions, and most of all thanks for not believing me when I say I love you. I'm sorry - but then what exactly am I sorry for?"

She looked at him in horror as he stood there saying goodbye. "Why should I apologise for being utterly honest from the start, telling you the score, telling you the truth, coming to meet your parents, calling them to say I was worried that you didn't answer your phone. Are these the actions of some kind of shit? No, I think they're what a man who loves you might do.

"But you know better. You have some different standard. I truly hope you find what you're looking for. You are a lovely girl, Ella. An angel in fact, and I'll always wish you well."

He was nearly at the gate when she caught him, held his arm and pleaded with him to come back. People walking their dogs on the leafy road saw the blonde girl in floods of tears pleading with the tall handsome man.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me. I want just one more chance. I'm such a fool, Don, it's only because I love you so desperately. I'm just afraid to believe you love me. Come back, please, please."

And if they had continued looking they would have seen the man leading her back into the lighted hall with his arm around her. "Does all this mean he'll be moving into your place now?" Deirdre asked some days later.

"Of course not, don't be silly," Ella said.

"Why is it so silly? It would save the rent on the place in the Financial Services area."

"But he has to say he's somewhere. He can't say he's here," Ella said as if it were totally obvious.

"No, of course not," Deirdre said, confused. "Why can't he say he's shacked up with Ella if it's a dead marriage?" Deirdre asked Nick later.

"Don't ask," Nick said. "I've found it much easier not to bring up cosmic questions like that."

Chapter Three.

The pattern of their life began then, at least three and sometimes five nights a week together. Ella saw no other friends in the evening because she was never sure whether Don might suddenly be free.

There were lunches, of course. Deirdre would voice the questions that Ella never spoke aloud. Is he going to leave her for you? He's practically living with you, for God's sake."

"He can't leave, because of his father-in-law. I told you that."

"Ricky Rice lives in the modern world. He's heard of divorce, he knows Don isn't in the family nest every night."

"Why rock the boat? We're fine as we are."

"And your parents, what do they think?"

"They're fine with it," Ella shrugged.

"No, Ella, they are not. Nobody's fine with their little girl being the plaything of a tycoon."

Ella pealed with laughter. I don't know why I have you as a friend. You try to unsettle me and you use ludicrous phrases. "Plaything." "Tycoon." For heaven's sake! You're so old-fashioned, so utterly disapproving."

Deirdre took a sip of wine, and spoke in a rare serious moment. "Actually, no, I'm not. I'm envious if you must know. I'd really love to be as absorbed and obsessed as you are."

Ella said nothing for a moment. It wasn't like Deirdre to be so utterly honest. It demanded a similar honesty in response. "Well, okay, if you must know, it's not at all fine with my parents."

"How could it be?" Deirdre was sympathetic.

"Well, it could be if they allowed themselves to move into this

century, Dee, if they just looked at the calendar and checked that

it's not nineteen twenty-something."

"They're no worse than anyone else of their generation." "Oh, but they are, even at school they don't go on that way." "Well, you can hardly tell the nuns you have a lover that lives in half the week."

"There are hardly any nuns left, only a few old ones doing the

accounts or the garden or something."

"But isn't it called a convent?" Deirdre protested.

"Oh, they're all called convent s, but that's not the point. Some

of the staff are ancient, but they don't go round frowning and fretting."

"Do they know, though?" Deirdre persisted.

"They don't not know. They don't ask, they don't mutter and have suspicions."

"Well, they aren't your parents."

"But they're in this century. It's all changed. You know when we were at school they used to say "Ask your mummy and daddy this" or "Tell your mothers and fathers that"? We don't say that any more. It's just not relevant. You can't assume that everyone has one daddy and one mummy at home."

"So what do you say?" Deirdre was interested.

"We say: "Ask them at home." Can they have a dictionary, an atlas, sheets of graph paper. Whatever. Even the geriatric teachers accept that it's not magic happy families for everyone these days."

"Still, you can't blame people for wanting the best for a daughter," Deirdre said. She was worried about her friend.

If I had a daughter, I'd want her to be happy, not respectable. That's the best anyone can have, to be happy, isn't it?"

When there was no reply, Ella spoke again. "Deirdre! It's what you just said a minute ago! You said you envied me because I was so happy."

I said obsessed," Deirdre said. "Same thing," said Ella. Don brought some clothes and arranged them neatly in Ella's wardrobe. He used Ella's washing machine and ironed his own shirts. Sometimes he ironed her things for her too. Ella's father wouldn't have done that in a million years. "Why not? I'm at the ironing board anyway," he would say with a grin that melted her heart.

Every two weeks or so she invited her parents for a meal in her flat, always on a night when she knew he would be busy elsewhere. She didn't even have to ask him to move his clothes from her wardrobe and his electric razor from her bathroom shelf. He just put everything into a suitcase and covered it neatly with a rug. It was never mentioned, even when he was unpacking the case, when he would return late that night after her parents had left.

He always sounded interested in them and what Ella had to report. He remembered everything she told him. Even small, unimportant details. That her father liked seedless grapes because he was afraid of appendicitis. Don would buy some when her parents were expected. He remembered that her mother liked a particular perfume and he bought it in the airport in time for her mother's birthday.

"I'd like to meet them socially, you know," he had said more than once.

"I know, Don, and they'd love you, but it's easier this way," she would say.

"Is it all easy and happy for you, Angel?" he asked. It was happy, yes, but easy, no. They asked too many questions.

"Ella, your father and I wouldn't dream of interfering in your personal life."

I know you wouldn't, either of you. What about more Greek salad?"

"But we do wonder: do you have enough friends and go out? I mean, if you are going to live in this kind of monastic seclusion here in this flat . .. then why don't you live at home and save the rent?"

"What your mother is saying, Ella, is that we'd love you to have a home of your own."

"And I do, Dad, and we're in it, having supper," she said, eyes too bright.

"Your father and I were just hoping .. ."

"Oh, we all live in great hope. Look, I'll clear this away. I have a lovely cheese and grapes. No seeds, Dad. No pips."

It was getting harder and harder. She wished they could just meet Don. Socially. Without any statement being made. It happened on a Sunday not long after that. Don was to go out to Killiney for the day. Margery's father had taken his grandsons out shooting. They had some pheasant and they were going to cook them.

"Savage kind of thing to do, going out killing small birds for fun," Ella had commented.

"I agree with you. I never go shooting, as you may have noticed." He held his hands up in surrender.

"You haven't time," she laughed at him.

"Even if I had. Anyway, they say they're shooting them for food, and they are eating them," he said as an excuse.

"Okay, peace, peace. I don't suppose that the chicken that ends up in the coqauvin for Sunday lunch enjoyed it all that much, either. Will you be late? I only ask because I was going to take my parents for an Irish coffee in that new hotel in town, in case you think I'd abandoned you."

"Great idea. They'd like that," he said. "No, I won't be late as it happens, and I'm too arrogant to think you'd abandon me." In the new hotel she was pointing out some of the features to her parents, the paintings of politicians on the walls, the very expensive carpeted area which had been closed off from the public by a silk rope, when she saw Don. He had come in from Killiney by himself. He was looking for her, he was going to engineer a social meeting with her parents. She sat back and let it happen.

"We did meet in Holly's, didn't we? How are you both?" He looked from one to the other with pleasure. "And Ella, great to see you again."

She smiled and let him carry the conversation. Had they ordered? No? Good, then let him get them something. What about an Irish coffee?

Her parents looked at each other in amazement. That's exactly what they were going to have. How had he guessed?

Ella wondered what would happen if she said he had guessed because she had told him about it in bed that very morning. Nothing good would happen, so she didn't. She watched him move the conversation from himself to getting her parents to talk. He was alert and attentive to everything they said.

Ella watched him objectively. She let her mind wander. It was not an act, he did like these people just as he had liked the people at the fund-raising dinner, just as he liked the people in Holly's Hotel, at Quentins, and presumably everywhere. It was a wonderful gift and he used it well.

She tuned in again as he was talking to her father.

"I agree with you entirely. You can't ask people to buy stock that you would not buy yourself. That way you lose your integrity."

"But, Mr. Richardson, you wouldn't believe how greedy and impatient young people are these days. The old, safe options aren't good enough ... they want something fast, something now, and I have a terrible time urging a bit of caution." His face looked sad and complaining, as it often did of late.

Ella heard Don speak in a slightly lowered voice. "It's the same for all of us, Mr. Brady. They all want the new car, the boat, the second home .. ."

"Ah, but it's different for you over there in Rice and Richardson. You have high fliers going in to you, people who already have money."

"Not so. We get all sorts of people who hear that we're good. It's a lot of pressure to be good every week. You're talking to someone who knows about it."

Don Richardson was making himself the equal of her timid father.

I think that every Monday morning," Ella's father said sadly.

"Well, speaking about tomorrow, let me share something with you that I'm going to do myself first thing in the office .. ."

Their voices were really low now. Ella heard mention of a building firm which just might be going to get a huge contract. It would be the nearest thing to a safe bet that they could offer to their demanding high fliers. "If it's only a might .. .?" Ella heard her father say fearfully.

I wouldn't steer you wrong." His warm voice was so strong and reassuring. Don wouldn't steer anyone wrong or lie to them. It wasn't in his nature. Please, may Dad be strong enough to take his advice. If Don said these builders were going to get the contract, then he knew they were. Don knew everything. Naturally, the builders got the contract. And, amazingly, her father had actually passed on the tip and he was much more highly regarded in his company than before. Her father told her happily that it had been a real act of kindness of that man to give him the word. And Ella forced herself not to sound too pleased.

Her mother said that the partners in the law firm where she worked couldn't believe that Rice and Richardson had recommended them to do some work. Nothing complicated, just run-of-the mill testamentary and probate work, but it had done her no end of good. People used to think that it was almost time for her to retire, but not any more. Ella said it was only her mother's due.

Nick told Ella that Don Richardson must have a filing system in his head. At least twice a week they got a call from someone saying that Don had given them the name of Firefly Films. It was like a seal of approval.

And finally, the last citadel fell, and Deirdre said she liked him. "You don't have to tell me this, Dee. I'll survive even if you don't," Ella said with a laugh.

But no, Deirdre wanted to make her position clear. She had been in a trendy nightclub and Don had come up to her. "Very far from all your domestic fronts tonight," Dee had said to him.

"I know you disapprove of me, Deirdre, and in many ways

I respect you for looking out for a friend. All I can say is that I love her, but I wouldn't be helping anyone or anything by leaving Margery and the boys now. Ella knows everything there is to be known."

Deirdre looked almost embarrassed. "I believed him, Ella. I bloody believed him. I even believed him when he told me he was entertaining people from Spain and they had insisted on coming to the nightclub. He does love you. You do have everything."

"Not everything, Dee. Not the home and the babies," Ella said.

"Don't worry about it. Women can have babies at sixty these days," Deirdre had said cheerfully. "You have over thirty years before you need to start getting broody." As the months went by, Ella felt she had known no other life. Soon those boys would grow up and they could think again seriously. But now? It was all fine, so why upset what was working well?

Don's part of the study "was as tidy as he was. He used a mobile phone and got in the habit of moving out into the hall when he answered a call. The reception was better and he didn't interrupt the television or the music that they listened to. He had a few books on the wall shelves, and business magazines in the rack, but everything else was in a small laptop.

"Suppose you lost it?" she teased him once. "Suppose we had burglars, or it was snatched from you in the street?"

"Backup," he said simply. "House rule: we all copy every single thing from that day's transaction on to a disk every evening."

"And what do you do with the disks?" She was interested. "Surely you could lose a disk just as easily?"

"What have we here, Ella? An investigation, a tribunal?" He laughed, but his eyes weren't smiling.

Ella was annoyed with him and showed it. "Sorry, Don. Didn't know the little woman wasn't allowed to be interested. Forget it. Forget I even spoke."

"Hey, Ella angel, you're being a little bit heavy," he began.

"No, I'm not. If you asked me a question about school, I'd think you were interested and I'd answer you. I wouldn't accuse you of being part of a Department of Education hit squad."

"I apologise."

"No need to. Message received. Don't ask Don about his work. Okay, I'll remember."

"You're very hurt," he said.

"No, just a bit pissed off. I'll get over it."

"Come here, please ... I beg you." His eyes were pleading.

"What?"

He opened his little computer. The one that fitted in his briefcase. "First my password. I want you to know that." His face was very serious.

"Don, this is silly."

"My password is "Angel". It has been since I met you." He typed it in and the program sprang to life. "Please, Ella, look at the headings. My life is your life. You are welcome to look at any of these at any time."

"That wasn't what I wanted ... you were short with me, that's all."

"See, here's Killiney, all the details about bills and expenses are there. Here's the boys" school fees and trust funds under their names, James and Gerald ... and here's travel, and here's Ella."

"You have a file on me?" Her voice was a whisper.

"Angel, of course I have." He pointed to a file called "Brady".

She was in tears now, but he took no notice. He was determined to explain everything, show her how open he was being with her.

"These are the day-by-day transactions in these files. These are the ones we put on disk, and since you wanted to know what we do with the disks, we post them back to the office. We all have little ready-stamped envelopes. Now, Ella, you know the password, anything you want to know is there, but don't ever tell me again that I am secretive. That's the last thing I am."

"How can I tell you how sorry I am?" she asked through tears.

He stroked her hair. "Angel Ella, I'm the one to be sorry if I sounded sharp to you. I get people asking me questions day and night. It's such a relief to be with you, you don't." His face was full of remorse.

"I'm such an idiot," she sniffed.

"I love you, Ella."

I know," she said. I don't deserve you." "Your father wouldn't dream of asking you, but then you know me. I'm such a busybody, Ella. It's just that we wondered, do you see a lot of that Don Richardson?" Barbara Brady's voice trailed away with the enormity of her intrusion into her daughter's life.

"Oh, I run into him a lot around the place, yes. Any problem with that?" Ella looked a long, clear look at her mother.

"No, no, none at all. It's just that he is married, and all that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing exactly?"

"Well, married, I suppose, and with children. Two sons, I heard."

"Ah, that's nice for him then."

"Ella, you know we want the best for you."

"As I do for you and for Dad, too." Ella's smile was radiant. "Will you come to Spain at half-term?" Don asked her.

"I'd love to, but won't it be ... difficult?"

"No, not remotely. I'd love to show you the coast."

"I'd love to see it. I pay for my own ticket, though."

"That's silly, Angel. I have a ticket for you."

"Leave me my pride and dignity. Won't I be staying in your house? Isn't that enough?"

"Well, no, I thought we'd stay in a hotel. Easier."

"Sure." But Ella was quiet.

I chose it for you in case you "were uneasy about staying in what is in many ways a family house."

"No, I mean it, sure, that's very sensitive of you, but I have my own money, Don. I'd prefer to pay for the ticket." Tine, Angel," he said. "How many days?"

"You said you had six days. I booked for that." He smiled at her. "God, I love you, Don Richardson," she said. The airport was crowded with families, couples, lovers, groups of girls on package tours. None of them were remotely as happy as Ella. She had six days here. Like a honeymoon.

She almost hugged herself at the airport as they came out among the other passengers into the sunshine towards all the hoteliers and travel agents waving banners and shouting out names.

Don had booked a car in advance.

"Sit here, Angel. I'll go and do the boring bit," he urged. So Ella sat minding their cases and Don's briefcase. She admired him as he walked relaxed and easy to the car desk, his jacket over his arm.

She thought she saw him paying in cash. He seemed to have a fistful of notes. But that was unlikely. Maybe he was just changing money. He was coming back to her, smiling.

"Enjoy your vacation, Senor Brady," the man at the car desk called to him.

"I put your name on the rented car too. He obviously knows who is the important one here," Don said with his arm around Ella's shoulder.

She was childishly pleased. "I've never driven on the wrong side of the road," she began.

"A bright girl like you, of course you can do it," he teased.

"It's very good of you, Don."

"Not a bit of it. Anyway, nice for you to have the car if I have to do a little work. Come on now, let's go find it and we'll toss a coin for who drives."

"I think we've tossed it and you won," she said, laughing and taking him by the arm.

It was a very luxurious hotel. They had a huge balcony, where room service delivered their meal, lit candles for them, and gave Ella a great big white orchid, which she put in her hair. "I'm so happy here," she said.

"Tomorrow I have to trek off and meet people, do things, set up things. Will you be all right on your own?"

"Of course I will. I'll just lie out here and read. And get suntanned. And maybe trip up and down to the pool."

"Good girl. I'll be back by seven at the latest." He smiled lazily at her over his Spanish brandy.

"Will you take the car?" she asked innocently.

She saw his eyes narrow momentarily. "I might, Angel, I might not. I'll see, okay?"

"Sure. I didn't want you to tire yourself out, that's all."

He relaxed.

Next morning she watched from the balcony as he went off on his list of meetings. A woman picked him up in the forecourt of the hotel. A woman who looked very like his wife Margery. The day seemed endless. There were just so many times you could swim up and down a pool. The thriller she had bought at Dublin airport didn't hold her attention. She wasn't hungry enough for the hotel buffet.

She took a taxi into town to the harbour and had a glass of wine, some cheese and olives as she looked at the boats bobbing up and down and the tourists walking up and down. She would not ask him. It could have been anyone. She would not call Margery Richardson's house back in Killiney. What would it prove if she were not there? Either you trusted someone or you did not. It was as simple as that. And she must have been mistaken, he would have told her if Margery were in Spain. But suppose just for a moment that Margery were here. After all, she was still involved in her father's business. She had a right to be here. The marriage was over. How often had he told her this? He had taken her on this magical holiday because he loved her and wanted to be with her . . . Wouldn't Ella be very silly to make a big scene about it? However much it cost her, she would say nothing.

It was very hard not to ask innocent questions that could sound like an interrogation. So when he returned in time for a swim in the sunset, Ella asked nothing. He was very loving. She had been insane to imagine that he had met up with his ex-wife or estranged wife or whatever she was. Nobody who loved her the way Don did, so passionately, could have spent the day with another woman. Then he said he had to do a bit of work, check that he had all the notes of today's work in his computer, and make the backup disk. She sat and watched him dreamily.

"Order up some supper, Angel. I'll be through in half an hour," he said.

She ordered asparagus and a plate of grilled prawns to follow.

"Was it a tiring day?" she asked.

She had considered the remark for a long time. There was surely no way he could take offence at that.

He looked at her and took her hand. "It was, Angel, very tiring. People are very greedy, you know. A lot of my clients want the sun, moon and stars, and then some more. They think they own me."

"You don't need them that badly, do you?"

"We do, really, Angel. Ricky always says that they are the most demanding, the ex-pats, they have nothing to do all day except play golf, swim and read their portfolios."

"Why can't they come back to Dublin to see you?" she asked innocently.

"Why do you think?" His face was hard.

She realised that a lot of them were tax exiles; some of them might have even more pressing need to stay away.

"Sorry," she said.

He got up and went over to kneel beside her. "No, I'm the one that's sorry. One of these guys just insists I spend a couple of nights in his hacienda, as he calls it ... He won't let me stay all alone in a hotel."

"No!" She was shocked.

"Yes, I'm afraid I have to. What do I tell Ricky? That I won't go out to a huge place with two swimming pools, billiard room, and the works ..."

"He can't eat into your private time, Don . . ."

"He doesn't see it as private time. Please don't make a scene, Ella. I'm so upset myself already, I couldn't bear it if you .. ."

"No, of course I won't."

"Thank you." He kissed her on the forehead. Then she saw him moving towards the big carved chest of drawers.

"Not tonight, Don?"

"He insists. I'm so very sorry. You know how little I want it. This was meant to be our time." He said it with his hands spread out in mystification.

She must be very careful not to upset him, but she was so annoyed she could barely speak. Imagine her sitting here like a

fool in a big posh hotel, while Don played billiards and swam with some tax dodger, or worse. To please his father-in-law.

"Don't be silent on me, Angel."

"No, of course not. Let's get you packed. The sooner you"re gone the sooner you're back."

He looked very relieved. A row averted.

She watched him pack. Don Richardson, the fastidious man who was going away for three days, took one shirt, one change of underwear. And his laptop computer.

She told him she would be just fine and that she would dress up and cruise the swimming pool and find a new companion. She would have forgotten his name when he got back.

"Don't forget me, Angel. I am the great love of your life. As you are of mine. One of the reasons I'm doing all this nonsense is so that we can be free to spend long years together, in places like this where I can throw the laptop out into the sea and we never have to go and be nice to boring old clients who are semi-crooks. Do you believe me?"

Ella did. Why else would he have taken her out to Spain if he didn't love her? It "was a long two and a half days, but she kept busy. She went on a bus tour of the area. They passed a cluster of very wealthy homes.

"They all have two swimming pools and billiard rooms and mountain views from one side and sea views from the other," the guide said proudly. "Mainly English and Irish people, who come very often here," he added.

It could be the very place where Don was playing billiards to please his father-in-law, Ella thought. She noted what it was called: Play a de los Angeles. Place or beach of the Angels. How ironic it would be if he had to leave his own Angel for a place with the same name. "Did you find a new love?" Don asked when he came back, two and a half days later.

"No, did you?" she laughed.

"No, but I'm weary. Can our vacation begin now, Angel?"

So she knew there would be no chat about the client who'd insisted on taking up all his time and wrecking their holiday.

Don spent a lot of time at the laptop, more than she would have liked. When she woke he was tapping away. Often, after they made love in the evening, he slipped from the bed and seemed to come to life again at the little screen. That's today's world, she told herself. He is doing it so that we can have all these years together when the time comes. "Will we go through separately?" Ella asked at Dublin airport.

"Why?" Don was mystified.

"Well, in case anyone sees us," Ella said.

"Like who?"

"Like Margery," she said.

"But how could she see us? Isn't she still in Spain?" he asked, confused.

So she had been right. Margery had been in Spain after all. "Ella, it's your mother," Don called out.

Usually he didn't answer the phone in her flat, but he had been waiting for an urgent call and had given the number.

"Thanks, Don. Hi, Mother."

"Oh, Don is there, I gather." Her mother sounded both doubtful and disapproving.

"Yes, we were just about to go out to a reception together. He said he'd pick me up. Well, what's new?"

"When will you be on your own?"

I beg your pardon?"

"Can I talk to you when you are alone?"

"Talk away, Mother."

"Call me back when you are free to talk." She hung up.

"Shit," Ella said.

"Something wrong?" Don raised his eyes from the computer.

"No, just a mad mother. You don't ever talk about yours."

"Nothing to say. She's quiet, lives her own life. Lets other people live their own lives."

"How admirable of her!" Ella began dialling her mother. "Listen, Don's gone out to get his car. What did you want to say?"

"Have you seen tonight's evening paper?" her mother asked in clipped tones.

Ella pretended she needed to get some milk and coffee. She went around to the convenience store. The evening paper had a big gossip column spread over two pages, and specialised in lots of photographs. "Who is the blonde on Don Richardson's arm as he comes back from Spain? The tycoon from the troubled R and R

firm doesn't look as if he is suffering any of the anxieties that their customers report. R and R need not mean Rice and Richardson, maybe Rest and Relaxation." There was a picture of Ella and Don laughing happily together at Dublin airport.

Ella felt the energy drain out of her as she leaned against the doorway of the shop. She read the whole paragraph again.

She was there in full view of the whole of Dublin described as a blonde in the same tone as you might say she was a tramp. What would people say or think?

But more frightening than any of that, what did it mean that Rice and Richardson was a troubled firm? Could they seriously be in any financial difficulty? Could Don be in danger? The newspapers always exaggerated about things but surely it was dangerous to imply that a company was in trouble unless it were true? The newspaper could well be sued.

When she got back to the flat, Don was still bent over the computer. She laid the newspaper on the table and went into the kitchen. She needed tea or coffee, something to stop her trembling.

"Anything you'd like, Don?" she called, forcing her voice to sound normal.

"Oh, peace of mind would be nice," he said with a hollow little laugh.

"Two of those on toast then!" she said, trying to laugh. But she wasn't laughing at all.

He left the computer and came across to the table where she put a large whiskey and the paper folded in front of him so that he could see the picture and caption.

"This is what caused the alarm bells with your mother, I suppose?" he said.

"You've seen it?" she said, shocked.

"Yeah, Ricky got an early copy."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I told you before, Angel. Let me worry about the work side of things."

"But this isn't about the work side of things," she said, bewildered.

"What else is it about, Ella? Once clients read that other clients have reported difficulties, there'll be a run on the place. Ricky and I have to get our strategy right."

She looked at him, dumbfounded.

"What is it, Ella?"

"The picture, the picture of you and me." "That's not important."

"What?"

"I mean, compared to all the rest that could be going down."

"But your wife, your father-in-law, my parents, everyone . . ." Her voice was shaky.

"Listen, Angel, believe me, that's the least of our worries." His

face was white and strained. He looked really ill and it alarmed

her. So, it was true. Something was wrong. What was happening?

But Don was so on top of everything.

"Don, you are going to be able to sort all this out, aren't you?" "Oh, yes. There's always plan B." He gave a mirthless little laugh.

"What's plan B?"

"It's an expression. If this plan isn't working we have to turn to another. It's just a phrase."

"Do you have a plan B?" she asked.

"There are loads of plans, but I didn't want to have to change to one of them. I like things the way they are." He looked around the room almost wistfully.

Ella felt herself shudder for no reason.

He downed his drink and became all businesslike. I have to go out to Killiney."

I thought you said she was in Spain."

I go out there for a lot of other reasons than to see my ex-wife, as I tell you over and over, Angel."

"Will you be coming back tonight, Don?"

"No, but I tell you, I'll take you to a big treat lunch tomorrow in Quentins."

"We can't, not after the picture of us . .." She indicated the evening paper.

"Nonsense. Everyone will have forgotten that - yesterday's news. Once they know their money's safe, they won't mind how many blondes parade through airports with Ricky and myself." He saw her face. "Joke, Angel."

"Sure." She saw he was packing his few things in a suitcase. "Getting rid of the evidence?" she said, and wished she hadn't.

"Should be ready for whatever hits the fan." He smiled. "Please, Angel, I'm stressed out enough as it is. Tomorrow, Quentins, one o"clock. I'll tell you everything then."

He was rushed and fussed. Calm, cool Don Richardson, who always moved languorously, wasn't moving like that now. Twice he put down his briefcase, his coat, his overnight bag, the evening paper. Twice he picked them all up again. She must not allow him to leave thinking she was in a sulk.

"Come over here and kiss me goodnight then, if I'm not to have the pleasure, the great pleasure, of you tonight." She ran her hands all over him and he began to respond.

But he pulled away. "No, Ella angel, that's not fair, that's using weapons that haven't been invented yet . .. Let me get out of here before we end up in the sack."

"Nothing wrong -with that," she said into his ear. But he escaped her clutches and ran out of the door.

Then suddenly with a shock she saw his briefcase. He had left his laptop. Did that mean he was stressed or what? He never parted from it for a moment. But at least it meant he was coming back. She had been s o nervous when she saw him packing his things and looking wistfully around the room.

Ella wasn't hungry. She put away the food she had been about to cook. She called her mother and said that it was idiotic to get into a tizzy about what a stupid paper wrote. And that it was just a picture of friends who had met at the airport or on the plane or whatever.

"Or on a holiday in Spain," her mother said.

"Or that," Ella said.

"Your father and I wondered."

"It's a mistake to wonder too much," Ella said.

"Don't be offensive, Ella."

I'm sorry, Mother. I'm just worried about something else, as it happens."

Ts he still there? In your flat?" her mother whispered.

"No, Mother, I'm all on my own. Come round and check."

"I only want what's best for you. We both do."

"We all want what's best. That's the problem," Ella said with a great sigh and hung up.

Then she phoned Deirdre. It was an answering machine. "It's Ella, Dee. Be very glad you're not at home. I was going to groan and grumble and complain for a bit at you, but, well, now I can't. You must have seen the paper. It's not as bad as it looks. Don is very confident about it all, and I'll know much more after tomorrow lunchtime so I'll tell you everything then. Do you remember when we thought that life was a bit tame and dull? Wasn't it nice then?"

She hung up and sat at the table for a long time. She knew she wouldn't sleep, but she had better go to bed and try.

At three she got up despairing, and made tea. At four she opened the laptop computer. She typed out the word "Angel" that he had said was the password. It didn't come to life as it had when he typed it. It just said Password Invalid. She closed the machine and waited until dawn. Then she dressed carefully and went to the school. She supposed that she must have taught her students normally, on some kind of autopilot. But she couldn't remember a word she had said. Then it was lunchtime, and she drove to Quentins.

Chapter Four.

Mrs. Brennan ushered her to a table for two. "Will you have a drink while you're waiting, Ms Brady?" "No, thanks. I have to teach this afternoon. Better not be breathing fumes over them. One glass of wine with lunch will be my limit."

Brenda Brennan laughed. "They're not all as wise as you are, Ms Brady. They often go back to run big companies or indeed the country after considerably more than one glass of wine, I tell you."

"You'll have to write your memoirs," Ella said.

"No, I want to go on serving meals for a long time. No point in closing us down." She moved on to other tables, always a pleasant word here and there, never staying too long anywhere. She was amazingly elegant, Ella thought, and gracious. No wonder the place was so successful.

Brenda Brennan could make generalised remarks, but she would never say anything specifically indiscreet. Brenda would have realised that Ella was meeting Don Richardson, known family man. She might even have seen the photo in yesterday's paper. But she would give no hint. Of course, she had an easy life, Ella thought enviously. She was married to the man she loved, the chef Patrick Brennan. Lucky Brenda, she had no nerve-racking lunch ahead of her.

Ella wondered if she should order a brandy, but decided against it. Whatever he said, Ella would take it. She would not be like she was last night, whimpering and talking about herself and her

picture in the paper. Clearly he had his problems. She could have kicked herself for behaving so badly when he needed her most.

At one-fifteen he wasn't there. It was very unlike him. At one thirty she began to worry. Quentins was not the kind of place that hurried you or told you that the kitchen would be closing. But at twenty minutes before two, Ella went to the ladies" room. Brenda Brennan hated mobile phones at the table and she had to try and phone him.

There was no reply from his mobile. And no message recording service. This was very unusual. She would order something to eat. Or should she call the school first? Or should she telephone the house in Killiney? Or the office of Rice and Richardson? "Don't fuss, Ella," she spoke to herself aloud. She decided she would order food, something cold for both of them, and then when he eventually arrived there would be something to eat.

As she returned to her table, she noticed that Brenda had ordered her things moved to a private booth. Her book and glass of mineral water were there, waiting for her. Also, what looked like a small brandy.

Ella looked around her in surprise. Mon, the waitress, was nearby.

"Here you are, Ella. Much more cosy set-up if you're meeting a fellow." Mon had a huge smile and two jaunty little bunches of hair which stuck out at angles from her head.

"Yes, but

"Listen, compared to most that come in here, Ella, you don't have anything to worry about. That fellow's mad about you, we often say it behind your back, so why not to your face?" Mon was eager and reassuring.

"Did Don ring and ask to change the table?" Ella asked Mon.

"No idea." Mon was cheerful. "Mrs. Brennan said do it double quick, so it's done."

Ella felt a great sense of alarm. Whatever he wanted to tell her must be terrible if it had to be told in a secluded booth. Then she noticed Brenda Brennan slipping in opposite her. She carried an early copy of the evening paper for today.

"Ella," she said urgently.

What had happened to all the "Ms Brady" bit of an hour ago? "What is it?" She was full of fear.

"One or two customers recognised you. I thought best you be in here."

She opened the paper, and there it was again - the picture of Ella laughing up at Don at the airport. But why had they printed it a second time?

"When he comes in, he'll explain."

"He's not coming in, Ella. It was on the news at one-thirty. We heard it in the kitchen. He's gone to Spain. He left on the first plane this morning."

"No!" Ella cried. "No, he can't have gone away."

"He has, apparently. He was out there setting it all up. He has his wife and children there already, his father-in-law went yesterday through London ..."

"How do they know ...?"

Brenda's voice was just a whisper. "When all the clients went around to the office today to check on their assets, they couldn't get in. The place was locked up. They called the Guards and the Fraud Squad . .. and apparently he was on the eight a.m. plane."

"This is not happening."

I took the liberty of getting you a Cognac."

"Thank you," she said automatically but she didn't reach for it.

"And I could call the school for you if you gave me the number and told me who to call."

"That's kind of you, Mrs. Brennan, but I actually don't believe any of this. Don is coming in. He keeps his word."

"It's important how you behave now, for your own sake. You don't want to be running into a rake of journalists and photographers."

"Why would I?"

"This idiotic paper said he had a love nest with you in Spain. Gives your name and where you work."

"Well, see!" Ella was triumphant. "They know what you don't, that he'd never leave without me, never." Her voice was getting high, shrill, and very near hysteria.

Brenda caught her by the wrist. "The news programme on the radio knows what this crowd in the newspaper didn't know. They spoke to neighbours in Killiney about the house being closed up. They spoke to Irish people living in Spain, who were all very tight-lipped, as you might imagine."

"He couldn't, he couldn't." Ella shook her head.

Brenda released the girl's wrist. "There's an explanation. He'll get in touch, but the main thing is to get you out of here before someone sneaks a call to a journalist."

"They wouldn't!"

"They would. Don't go home and don't go to your school."

"Where will I go?" She looked pitiful.

"Go upstairs to our rooms. We live over the shop. Drink that down, write out the name and number for your school, and then go straight over to that green door there near the entrance to the kitchen ..."

"How will you know what to say to the school?"

Til know," Brenda said. She didn't add that it would hardly be necessary to say anything. They would all have read the paper and heard the lunchtime news. They would not be expecting Miss Brady back to classes this afternoon. Ella was surprised to see the big, handsome brass bed with the frill-edged pillows and rose-pink coverlet. It looked too luxurious, too sensual, for this couple, somehow. She took her shoes off and lay down for a moment to get her head straight. But the sleepless night and the shock worked more than she believed they would. She fell into a deep sleep and dreamed that she and Don were carrying a picnic up a hill, but everything was in a tablecloth and getting jumbled together. In the dream, she kept asking why did they have to do it this way, and Don kept saying, "Trust me, Angel, this is the way," and all the time there was a rattling of broken china.

She woke suddenly to the sound of a cup and saucer being placed beside her by Brenda Brennan. It was almost six o"clock. There was no picnic. She couldn't trust Don Richardson any more. Was there the slightest possibility that he might be back in her flat waiting for her? She began to get out of bed.

Brenda said she was going to have a shower. Perhaps Ella might like to look at the six o"clock news on television. Til be in the bathroom just next door if you need me," Brenda called.

Ella turned on the TV and found the news. She watched without thinking until the story came on. It was worse than she thought. Don had gone. That much was certain. And he had been out in Spain last week setting it all up. There were interviews with people who had lost their life savings. A man with a red face who had given money to Don Richardson every month so that he could buy a little retirement home in Spain, because his wife had a bad chest and needed good weather. "We are never going to see Spain now," said the man, twisting his hands to show how upset he was.

There was a tall, pale woman who looked as if she were too frail to stand and talk to a man with a microphone. "I can't believe it. He was so charming, so persuasive. I believe he will be back to explain everything. They tell me I don't own any apartment in that block. But I must. He showed me pictures of it."

Mike Martin, a man she knew, a friend of Don's and described by the newsreader as a financial expert, came on next. Ella had had a drink with him several times. He knew all about her. Don had said he was a bit of a smart aleck, always in something for what he could get out of it, but not the worst. Mike looked horrified by it all and said that it couldn't have come as a greater shock. Don and Ricky were such a pair of characters, of course, and everyone who flies near the sun gets their wings burned now and then.

But then he went on: It looks as if they must have known for about six months. But I still can't believe it. Don Richardson is such a decent fellow, he'd help anyone, you know, fellows on the street, people he met in bars. He was always generous with advice. Other guys in his line of business would say: "If you want my advice, come into the office and consult me." But never Don. I can't imagine him spending months plotting this runaway life, knowing he's leaving people in the lurch. He cared about people. I know he did."

Ella watched, open-mouthed.

The interviewer asked: "And will he miss people, friends, a lifestyle that he had in Dublin, do you think?"

"Well, of course, when all was said and done he was a family man, he loved his wife and boys, they went everywhere with him."

"Wasn't there a rumour that he had this blonde girlfriend, a teacher, who was photographed with him?"

"No. You better believe one thing," Mike Martin said. I may not know a lot about Don, and I sure as hell didn't know what he's been up to in the last six months in terms of his clients ... but one thing shines out. He never looked at another woman. Come on, now. If you were married to Margery Rice, would you?"

And then they cut to a picture of Margery Rice presenting prizes at a youth charity, very tiny and immaculately groomed, watched by her husband with pride.

Ella put the cup down.

Brenda came back into the room in her slip and put on a fresh black dress and arranged a lace collar in position.

"He knows about me and Don," she said. "I've met him many times."

"Well, isn't it just as well he kept his mouth shut?" Brenda said.

"No, it's not, it's better people know the truth. Don loves me. He told me so last night."

"Listen to me very carefully, Ella. I have to go down and serve a room full of people who will be talking about nothing else. I will have a polite, inscrutable smile on my face. I will say it's hard to know and difficult to guess and a dozen other meaningless things. But I know one thing. Only you must survive this, you must call your parents, tell them you're all right, decide what to do about your job and then go and find some of your friends, your own friends, not his. He only has business friends."

"You don't like him, do you?"

"No, I don't. My very close friends have lost their savings. Thanks to Mr. Charming."

"He'll give them back," Ella cried.

"No, he won't. Fortunately it's not very much. She and her fellow don't have very much, but they were saving hard and Mr. Richardson told them how to double their money. They believed him."

"He often said people were greedy," Ella said.

"Not these two, if you knew them. But that's neither here nor there. Survive, Ella, and rejoice that he may have loved you - well, at least enough not to let you or your family lose any of your savings in his schemes."

"No." She stood up. Her legs felt weak.

"What is it, Ella?"

"It's just my father. He's always going on about ideas Don gave him, hints here, a word there ... he wouldn't have been so foolish .. ."

"When were you talking to your parents?"

"Yesterday, but they said nothing. They were going on about my picture in the paper. If there was anything to say they'd have said it then."

"Nobody knew the extent of the scandal then. People only began to know it this morning."

They looked at each other in alarm.

"Ring them, Ella."

"He couldn't ... he didn't."

"You heard what they said on the television ..."

Brenda Brennan pointed to the white phone beside the bed.

Ella dialled. Her mother answered. She was in tears. "Where were you, Ella? Your father thought you'd gone to Spain with him. Where are you?"

"Is Dad all right?"

"Of course he's not all right, Ella. I have the doctor here with him. He's ruined."

"Tell me, tell me, what did he lose?"

"Oh, Ella, everything. But it's not what we lost that matters, it's what the firm lost. What his clients lost. He may have to go to gaol."

That was when Ella fainted.

Mrs. Brady hadn't hung up. That was something. At least Brenda could keep her there for long enough to get her address. She held Ella's head downwards so that more blood would flow towards the brain.

"I have to get home to them," Ella said over and over.

"You will, don't worry."

"Your restaurant - won't you be needed downstairs?"

"Head down," Brenda insisted.

Then she summoned Patrick's younger brother, Blouse. "You know where Tara Road is?"

"I do. I often deliver vegetables to Colm's restaurant if he's short."

"In about fifteen minutes, when she's up to it, drive her there, will you, Blouse?"

"Where are the car keys?" he asked.

Brenda turned out the contents of Ella's handbag. The keys were all on one ring.

It had a cherub on it.

"Angel," said Ella weakly.

"Yes, we have the keys." Brenda crammed everything back into the handbag, pausing only a fraction of a second to glance at a picture of Don Richardson smiling at the girl who had loved him. Ella's eyes were open and she was watching. Otherwise, Brenda would have torn it into a dozen pieces.

Ella gave Blouse directions to her parents" house. When they arrived, Ella's mother ran to the car. "I suppose you're one of his friends," she said when Blouse helped Ella from the car.

I'm not really anyone's friend, Madam. I'm Brenda's brother in-law. She asked me to drive this lady home."

"From where, exactly?"

"From Quentins Restaurant," he said proudly.

"Leave him, Mam. He's got nothing to do with anything."

"What do we know what has to do with anything?" Her mother looked as if somebody had given her a beating.

"Where's Dad?"

"In the sitting room. He won't go to bed. He won't take any sedation. He says he has to be alert if the office rings him."

"And have they rung him?"

"Not since lunchtime. Not since we learned that Don has left the country. There's no point in anyone ringing anyone now, Ella. It's all gone. All gone."

"I can't tell you how sorry I am," she said.

"Well, I'll be off now, then," Blouse Brennan said.

"Thank you very much, and will you thank your sister?"

"Sister-in-law," he corrected.

"Yes, well, say I'm very grateful."

"It's nothing," he said.

"How will you get back?" Ella's mother realised that he had left the car keys on the table.

"Which end of Tara Road is shorter to the bus?" he asked cheerfully. He was so unconcerned, he lived in a world where you drove people home in their own cars and took a bus back to a kitchen or scullery or wherever he worked. A world where people weren't greedy and didn't win and lose huge sums of money over business deals. He would never know anyone who lied and lied and lied like Don Richardson had lied. Even to people who loved him. Particularly to people who loved him. But Ella was too tired to care any more. All she wanted was to reassure her father that the world hadn't come to an end. She wanted to look him in the face and tell him that it would be all right. It was just that with every passing second, it seemed so unlikely that this was true.

He looked like an old man, a paper-thin old man whose skeleton was covered with a very fine parchment. When he smiled it was like a death mask. I didn't know, Dad. I didn't have any idea," she said.

"It's not your fault, Ella."

"It is. I introduced him to you. I made you think he was my friend. I thought he loved me, Dad. He told me last night that he loved me. You see, I was sure he did."

She knelt beside him. Her mother watched from the door with tears on her face.

"Dad, I'm young and I'm strong, and if I have to work day and night to make sure that you and Mother are all right, I will never take a day's holiday until I know I've done all that can be done."

"Child, don't upset yourself." His voice was very hesitant, as if he were having trouble breathing.

"I'm not a child, Dad, and I will be upset, very upset till the day I die that this should happen, because I made such a stupid, stupid error of judgement. But you know, Dad, even at this late stage, there could be an explanation. Perhaps it was all his father-in-law's doing."

"Please, Ella. Everyone trusts people when they love them," her mother said.

Her mother? Instead of bawling her out, she actually seemed to understand.

"No, I couldn't be like ordinary people, normal people like you and Dad, who found someone decent to love. I had to find a criminal, someone who ruins people and steals their livelihood and their savings."

"I don't mind losing the savings, Ella, that was just greed. I wanted to make a profit so that we could buy you a little house."

"A what? But I don't want a little house."

"But we knew you "weren't ever going to come and live here, so we wanted you to have a small place with character, and what with property being so dear, you'd never get that on a teacher's salary

"Father, what did you lose? Tell me."

"But I don't mind about what we lost. It's the office. He had been so helpful, you know, always seemed to be in the know."

"Yes, he was in the know, all right."

"And those first bits of advice that I gave people went down so well ... I took risks, Ella. I can't blame anyone but myself . .. it's just, it's just ..."

"Just what, Dad?"

"Just that two weeks ago, he said it would be easiest and quickest if I gave him the money direct to invest for a few of my clients. I'd never done it before. You know the laws and rules there are about that .. . but Don made it all sound so normal, somehow. He said he was going out to Spain. He could invest it there and then save time, cut a few corners. Why not? That's what he said, and you know I did think . .. why not?"

"I know, Dad. Who are you telling?" She stroked his hand. But her mind was far, far away. It was in Spain. The bastard. He had conned her father out of money which he had spent in that hotel. Don had spent the money that he pretended to be investing for her father's clients in shoring up his love nest for himself, wife and kiddies. While the daughter of the victim lay in the hotel swimming pool, waiting for him. Was there anything in the whole history of faithless love as sick and pathetic?

"Dad, you won't really have to go to gaol?"

I will certainly have to go to court," he said.

"But wasn't Don a legitimate adviser? You know, with a licence and everything ... surely you can't be held responsible?"

"All that would have helped if my clients were his clients, but they weren't. I only took his advice, his tips, his hints, as hearsay."

"Dad, your bosses, they know . . ."

"They know me for what I am, a weak, foolish old man," he said, and then for the very first time she began to cry.

She would recover. She knew that sometime in the future she might get over it and over him. But her father never would. That's why Don could never be forgiven. Everything passes, even scandalous stories like the disappearance of Ricky Rice and Don Richardson, and soon the front pages had other stories to tell. There was an official inquiry announced, of course, and people became much more cautious about investing anything anywhere. There had been much speculation about whether the family was really in Spain or had gone further afield. After all, there were extradition laws in Europe now. People could not hide in one member state from the law they had broken in another. Perhaps they were in Africa or South America.

Ella had been questioned by detectives. Did Mr. Richardson say anything about any plans to relocate in Spain when he and Ella had been on holiday there? Ella told them grimly that she knew of no such plans. The pain in her face seemed to convince them. She was as much a victim as many others had been.

Then the interest died down. In the media, if not for those whose hearts had been broken. The man with the red face, who had put all his money in a retirement villa for his wife, didn't forget. Nor did the pale woman who thought she had made a wonderful investment and owned an apartment in the south of Spain. The friends of Brenda Brennan, who had saved money for a wedding party, decided to laugh and make the best of it. They were people of middle years. Maybe fate was telling them they would have been foolish to have had a big celebration. Possibly a plate of sandwiches would do them fine.

Tim Brady took early retirement from his firm and spent his days filling out forms and dossiers about how and why he had given advice based on the casual snippets of information he had heard from a man he hardly knew. Barbara Brady offered to take early retirement from her firm of lawyers saying that she didn't want to embarrass them by staying on. Delicately, they managed to convince her that nobody knew who she was and it didn't matter anyway, and possibly theirs was a household that might need a little money coming in.

And Ella? Each day seemed to be forty-eight hours long. And no day seemed different from any other day nor any night from the one which followed.

It was just that the nights were worse.

Sleep would vanish. She would get up and pace around her room looking up at the shelf where she had hidden his briefcase and the laptop it contained. A hundred times she had wanted to take it to the Fraud Squad, say she had found it. They might be able to track down some of the money and rescue people like her father, like Brenda's friend Nora whose wedding savings were gone, like the man with the red face buying a villa, so he thought, for his wife who had a bad chest, like the pale woman on the television interview who said she knew she owned the flat because Don had shown her a picture of it.

But she couldn't do it.

He had trusted her, he never left that briefcase behind him, she used to joke that it was chained to his arm. She had delayed him by kissing him when he was leaving her flat in a rush that day but he hadn't worried or panicked. He hadn't called her or got anyone else to. He knew she would keep it safe for him.

And, in spite of all the evidence, she knew he would be coming back for her.

Anyway it was all down to Ricky Rice, he ran the whole show. Everyone knew that, people just did his bidding. Indeed, the very fact that Don had left the computer with her was some kind of message. Why hadn't she thought of that before? Of course he would just come walking back into her life to tell her that it had been sorted. A love like theirs wasn't the ordinary kind of affair that people thought it was.

He was just sorting things out.

At night it seemed clear and certain.

She just had to wait for it to happen.

It was during the days that it seemed unlikely. There was no message from Spain, no call on the mobile, no text message. And then one day there was the request for a meeting by the Fraud Squad. Did Ella have anything pertinent to their enquiries ? Like a list of files?

Ella looked the two men straight in the eye and said no, she had no files and no knowledge of anything that "would help them.

"He didn't give you anything to look after for him, Madam? Any records, that sort of thing?"

She wasn't quite sure why she said no. Strictly speaking it was true. He hadn't asked her to look after anything for him. But of course she was lying to them and she knew it. Why? she wondered. Why had she wrapped Don's laptop in a great amount of padding and put it deep in her suitcases of clothes that were on the way back to Tara Road? If they had a search warrant they would have found the little machine and she would have been in real trouble. But in a mad way she felt she owed it to him not to hand over something he had left in her care. And of course he knew she had it, so he might well get in touch with her about it.

It was a very unreal time. She would have been lost without her friends. Deirdre had been there day and night whenever she was needed. Sometimes they said nothing, they just listened to music. Sometimes they played gin rummy. Deirdre helped her to pack up all her things in the flat and move them back to Tara Road. Ella wanted to burn the sheets on the bed. Deirdre said this was no time for dramatic gestures; she would take them to the laundry and then give them to a charity shop.

It was Deirdre who explained to the landlord that Ella would not be in a position to pay any more rent, and could they cut the agreement short? Deirdre often made sure she was there in the evening, about supper time, so that the family would have to give the appearance of normality and sit down and have something to eat.

Sometimes Deirdre asked her, "Do you still love him?"

Always Ella answered, "I don't know."

Deirdre asked would she take him back suppose he did ask her? Ella took the question very seriously. "I think not, and when I look at my father's face, I think surely I'd never be able to look at Don again. But then I keep hoping there's some other explanation for the whole thing, which of course there isn't. So, crazy as it sounds, I must have some feelings for him still."

And Deirdre would nod and consider it too. Deirdre had insisted on only one thing: that she go in to the school and face them immediately. So Ella went to see the school principal.

Til leave whenever you want me to," she said.

"We don't want you to."

"But where's the bit about us giving a good example to the little flock?"

"The little flock would buy and sell us all, Ella, you know it, I know it."

"I can't stay, Mrs. Ennis, not after this scandal."

"What did you do? You were taken in by a man. You won't be the first or the last to have that happen to you, let me tell you. You're a good teacher. Please don't go."

"The parents?"

"The parents will gossip for a couple of weeks and the kids will make jokes, then it will be forgotten."

I don't know if I can face it."

"What's to face? You have to look at people whatever job you do. And presumably you have to earn a living."

"Oh, I do, Mrs. Ennis, I do."

"Then earn it here. Go on just to the end of the school year anyway. See how you feel then."

I might want to get out of teaching entirely, you know, try something different."

"If you do, then do it, but not in mid-year. You owe us this, and you owe it to yourself not to run away, like he did."

"You've been very understanding. Imagine an Irish convent school allowing a scarlet woman to stay on."

"You're not very scarlet, Ella, just a bit pink-eyed at the moment. Get back into those classrooms. The one thing we can all say about teaching is that it's demanding enough to take your mind off other things."

"Thank you, Mrs. Ennis."

"Ella, he won't get away with it totally, you know. Even if he doesn't get a gaol sentence. He'll get some sort of punishment."

Ella shrugged. "Whatever."

"He will. He can't swan around here any more, go to golf clubs, yacht clubs, be recognised in restaurants."

"They've all those things in Spain, too."

"Not the same at all. Anyway, none of my business. Hang in there for the rest of the year, will you, and then we'll talk again."

"You're very kind, very understanding."

"Well, we've all been there, Ella, and just between us, the late Mr. Ennis, as he is often respectfully called, is not late, he's just out of the frame. He had a different view of his future which involved my savings account and a girl young enough to be his daughter, so of course I understand."

For days afterwards, Ella wondered whether she had imagined this conversation. It seemed highly unreal as did everything else these days. It was as if she were watching all these conversations on a stage rather than taking part in them.

First Sandy phoned. She still worked with Nick in Firefly Films.

"I just rang to say that if you were looking for extra work, there's always a bit of night work going here."

"Thanks, Sandy, that's very nice of you. Nick okay with this?"

"Yeah, but you know the way he is. He didn't want to ask you in case you thought he was patronising you or patting you on the head or something."

"I wouldn't think that."

Then are complicated."

"Tell me about it, Sandy."

"What'll I tell Nick?"

"Tell him I'd love it, anything at all." And Brenda Brennan offered her work when Ella had telephoned to thank her for all the kindness. "If you want any weekend work here in Quentins, just ask. I know it's only a few euros when what you need is thousands, but it might be a start."

"Half the city wants to work in Quentins, you can't let me waltz in there ahead of the rest."

"There's a bit of solidarity among women, Ella. You got a punch in the face and now you need a hand up as well. You'll find a lot of people will offer one." "Ella Brady?"

"Yes?" She always sounded jumpy and nervy on the telephone

now. It was a bad habit and she must get out of it.

"This is Ria Lynch from down the road."

"Oh yes, indeed."

There had been a time when this woman, rather than Ella, had been the subject of gossip all over Tara Road. Her husband had left her, and in a very short time Ria had taken up with Colm, who owned the successful suburban restaurant. The place had buzzed for a while, but now they were as settled and staid as any regular married couple. What could she be calling about?

I heard you were badly hit by Don Richardson, and I want to give you some advice. I thought I'd talk to you rather than your parents."

"Yes?" Ella had been a little cold. Unasked-for advice wasn't too welcome these days.

"Don't let your father sell the house to raise money. Change it into four flats; they were flats already - you're halfway there. You'll get a fortune for renting them. Then take your garden shed, make it bigger and live in it for a couple of years."

"Live in the shed?" Ella wondered if the woman was deranged.

"Look, it's enormous. All it needs is a couple of thousand spent on it, put in plumbing, and it can be made into two bedrooms, and a living-room with a kitchenette."

"We don't have a couple of thousand."

"You would have in weeks if you let your beautiful house. I'll take you and show you Colm's old house if you like. It's a gold mine. Everyone wants to live in this road these days, and there's so much money about."

"Why are you telling me this, Ria?" Ella had hardly ever talked properly to this woman before.

"Because we've all been through this - bankruptcy, a fellow not being what he said he was."

Ella wondered if this was true. Had half the country been cheated and duped? One night she dreamed that he had sent her a text message on her mobile phone. Just two words: Sorry Angel, It was such a real dream Ella had to get up in the middle of the night and check her phone. There was nothing there but a message from Nick. I really need your help for a competition . . . Say yes." She phoned him next morning. He brought a sandwich up to the school and they had lunch in her car. His enthusiasm was as boyish as ever. There was going to be a film festival on a theme. Some aspect of Dublin life which would illustrate all the changes there had been in the city over the years.

"What kind of change do you mean? Architecture or something?"

"No, I don't think everyone will go for that," Nick said.

"Well, what then? The growth in Irish self-confidence?"

"Yes, but we can't just make a film saying everyone's becoming more confident. Lord, just look at those confident faces passing by . . . there has to be something that binds them together, some theme."

"And if we found one, what do we do next?"

"Go to New York and sell it to this fellow there who has a foundation. The King Foundation, to help young people in the arts. If we made this film, Ella, and won a prize at the Festival, we'd be made. Made, I tell you. Something that gives a picture of Dublin changing . .. Can you think of anything that sort of sums it all up?"

"Sorry to ask, Nick, but would there be money in it? You know we're cleaned out."

"I sort of heard," he said, looking away.

"So is there?"

"Yes, there would be, if we got the right idea."

"And -when would it need to be done?"

"We need to be ready to pitch in three months" time."

"That would work out all right. I could work during the day, once we get school holidays from here in two weeks from tomorrow."

"Do you have any ideas at all?" he asked.

She was silent for a moment. "Quentins," she said eventually.

"What do you mean?"

"Do a documentary about the restaurant, the changes in people's aspirations, their hopes and dreams, since it was founded about forty years ago."

"It's never been there that long."

"Well, it was a totally different kind of cafe in the sixties and early seventies, until Brenda and Patrick took it over. It was really only watery soup and beans on toast before then, you know."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, that's what people wanted then. And look how different it all is nowadays. You could tell the stories of the kind of people who come there .. . how it's all changed since the days when it was full of people with suitcases tied with string come in for tea and a couple of fried eggs before they took the emigrant ship."

"It was never like that, surely?"

"It was, Nick. They have pictures of it all up in their bedroom, a whole history waiting to be told."

He didn't ask how she had been in the Brennan's bedroom. Nick was very restful sometimes. But he didn't buy the idea. "It would just be a plug for them. It would be like a commercial for the restaurant."

"They don't need it. Aren't they full all the time? No, it wouldn't be done like that ... it could be a series of interviews with people remembering different times . .. you know .. . oh, all kinds of things - the way First Communions have changed, stag party dinners, corporate entertaining. It sure tells the story of a changing economy better than anything I know."

He was interested now. "Other restaurants are going to be full of grizzles and complaints about why -we didn't pick them."

"Deal with that when it happens, Nick."

He looked at her admiringly. "You're very bright, Ella," he said.

"Where did it get me?" she asked.

"You asked about money," he said, changing the subject. "Well, this is what I suggest. If you help me develop this and sell it to Derry King, I'll pay you a proper wage for five weeks. Suppose I said eight hundred euros a "week?"

"That's four thousand euros. Fantastic," she said, delighted.

"What do you need it for so badly?"

"To do up the garden shed for my mother and father, because thanks to my lover, they are going to have to leave their own house."

He laughed first and then stopped. "You're bloody serious," Nick said, shocked.

"Yes, I am."

I can give it to you now, tomorrow."

"No, you can't, Nick."

I can. Let's say I can get my hands on it easier than you can."

"You're not to go into debt."

"No, but we've got to get the Bradys a henhouse or whatever to live in." He grinned at her.

Wouldn't it have been much easier if she had loved Nick, Ella thought.

They made an appointment with the Brennans the next day. Nick and Sandy and Ella sat in the kitchen of Quentins at five o"clock and told them about the project. Brenda and Patrick were doubtful at first. They listed their reservations. It would be too much upheaval, it would get in the way of their main business, which was to provide food. They didn't need the publicity. Perhaps some of the customers might not like to be interviewed.

Slowly they were worn down. Soon they began to think of the positive side of it. In a way, it would be some kind of permanent proof of what they had done. It would be exciting to be considered part of the history of Ireland. Customers who didn't want to be interviewed need not be approached. They had huge amounts of memorabilia. Both of them were magpies who collected things and refused to throw them away. And then the most compelling reason of all ... Quentin would surely love it.

"Quentin?" Ella said. "You mean, there really is a living person called Quentin?"

"Oh yes, indeed there is," said Patrick Brennan the chef.

"Yes, he would," Brenda said slowly. "It could be a sort of monument to him."

"Could you tell us some of the stories about the place?" Ella asked, and a s she turned on the tape recorder she realised that for the past hour and a half she had not thought about Don Richardson once. The pain that was like something sticking into her ribs was not nearly so sharp. Still there, of course, but not like it had been earlier.

Quentin Barry had always wished that he had been called Sean or Brian. It was hard to be called Quentin at a Christian Brothers school in the 1970's. But that was the name they had wanted, his beautiful mother Sara Barry had wanted, she who had always lived in a dream world far more elegant than the one she really lived in.

And it was what his hard-working father Derek wanted too. Derek, who was a partner in Bob O'Neill's accountancy firm. He had always seen the day when his son's name would be on the notepaper too. That had been very important to him. Bob O'Neill had no son to succeed him. If people saw the name Quentin Barry on the office paper as well as Derek's, they would know who was important.

Since his earliest days, Quentin knew that he was going to work in his father's firm. It was never questioned. He even knew which room he would work in. It was across the corridor from his father's. At present, it was a storeroom and his father was keeping it that way until it was time for Quentin to take over.

The other lads at the Brothers didn't know what jobs, if any, they would get when they left school. A few of them might go to university. Some might go to England or America. There would, of course, be a couple of vocations to the priesthood or the Brothers.

Quentin used to pretend that he too had a choice in it all. He said that he might be a pilot or a car mechanic. These were things that sounded normal and masculine. Not like his name, not precious, like his lifestyle as an only child with a mother who looked like a film star and talked very fancy when she drove by school to collect her son in a cream-coloured car.

Sometimes Quentin felt able to tell his mother about his doubts about his future career. "You know, Mother, I might not be a good accountant like Dad is," he would begin nervously.

"Quentin, my sweet one, you are twelve years old!" she would say. "Don't get involved in the awful world of business until you have to."

He loved to help in the home, choosing fabrics for the sitting room, making table decorations for dinner parties.

His father frowned on this kind of activity. "Don't have the lad doing girly things like that," he would say.

"The lad, as you call him, likes to help, which is a blessing since all you do is sit down, put your elbows on the table, and eat and drink what's put in front of you."

Quentin wondered did other people's parents bicker as much as his did. Probably. It wasn't something they talked much about at school. He knew one thing, which was that the other boys" mothers did not talk to them like his mother did.

Sara Barry always called him her Sweet One, and the Light of her Life. Or something else very fancy. Other boys" mothers called them great galumphing clods and useless good-for-nothings. It was very different. And although his mother loved him to bits, she was always saying it, she never took him seriously about not wanting to be an accountant. "But my sweet boy, you are only twelve."

Or thirteen or fourteen. By the time he was sixteen, he knew he had to say something.

"I do not think I'm cut out for accountancy, Dad."

"No one's cut out for it, boy. We have to work at it."

"I won't be any good at it, truly."

"Of course you will, when you're involved. Just concentrate on getting your exams like a good lad."

"I'm way behind at Maths, and honestly, I'm not going to get any good exam results in anything. Isn't it better to be prepared for that now rather than it coming as an awful shock?"

"Do you study, do your homework?" His father's frown was mighty.

"Well, yes, I do, but ..."

"There you are. It's just nerves. You're too like your mother, highly strung, not a good thing for a man to be."

Quentin failed his exams quite spectacularly.

The atmosphere at home was very hostile. It made it worse that his parents blamed each other much more than they blamed him.

"You upset him with all that pressure that he has to be a dull boring accountant and fill your shoes," Sara Barry hissed.

"You fill him up with nonsense, mollycoddling him and taking him shopping with you like a poodle," Derek Barry countered.

"You don't care about Quentin, all you care about is having two Barrys in that plodding office to annoy Bob O'Neill," Sara snapped.

"And what do you care about, Sara? You only care that the dull plodding office, as you call it, makes enough money for you to buy ever more clothes in Haywards."

Quentin hated hearing them shout over him. He agreed to repeat the year and have extra tuition. Derek Barry was glad that he had never mentioned any actual timings to Bob O'Neill.

One of the Brothers up at the school was a gentle man with a faraway look. Brother Rooney was always to be found in the school gardens, digging here, planting there. He used to teach a long time ago, but he said he wasn't good at it, he would drift away and tell the boys stories.

"That would have been nice," Quentin said.

It wasn't really, Quentin, it was no use to them. I was meant to be putting facts into their heads, getting them exams. So I sort of drifted out to the garden, which was where I wanted to be in the first place, and I'm as happy as Larry now."

"Aren't you lucky, Brother Rooney? I don't want to be an accountant at all!"

"Then don't be, Quentin, be what you want."

I wish I could."

"What do you like? What are you good at?"

"Nothing much. I like food. I love beautiful things and I like helping people enjoy themselves."

"You could work in a restaurant."

"With my parents, Brother Rooney? Can you see it?"

"Well, it's good, honest work, and they'd get used to it in time. They'd have to."

"And what about the bit where God says, "Honour thy Father and thy Mother"?" Quentin smiled at the older Brother.

"It only says honour them, it doesn't say lie down like a doormat and go along with any of their cracked schemes." The old man with the gardener's hands and the faded blue eyes looked as if he was on very safe ground.

"Is that what you did, Brother Rooney?"

"I did it twice, boy, first to get into the Order. My parents wanted me to work on the buildings in London and bring in big money, but I wanted peace, not more noise and bustle. They were very put out, but I never raised my voice to them, and it worked. Eventually. And then when I was in here I had to fight again to get out of the classroom and into the garden. I explained over and over that I couldn't hold the children's attention, couldn't make them understand things, but I'd love to make the garden bloom, that I could serve God best that way, and that worked. Eventually."

I wonder how long is eventually." Quentin sounded wistful.

"You'd be wise to start at once, Quentin," said Brother Rooney, picking up his hoe and getting at some of the hard-to-reach weeds at the back of the flowerbed. "Eventually is now, Father, Mother," Quentin said that evening at supper.

"What's the boy talking about?" His father rattled the paper.

"Derek, have the courtesy at least to listen to your son."

"Not when he's talking rubbish. What does that mean, Quentin? Is it something you got from one of your loutish friends up in the place we thought was going to make a man of you and give you an education? Nicely fooled we were, too." Derek Barry snorted.

"No, Father, I don't have many friends as you may notice. I'm not interested in football or drinking or going to the disco, so I'm mainly on my own. I was talking to Brother Rooney, who does the gardens up in the school."

"Well, you might have tried talking to one of the more educated Brothers, one who would tell us what on earth we are to do with you, my darling." This time it was Quentin's mother's turn to look sad and impatient with him.

"You see, I'll never be an accountant. I'll never get the qualifications to get me taken on to study as one. We will all understand and accept that eventually. So why don't we accept it now?"

"And you'll do what with your life, exactly?" his father asked.

"I'll get a job, Father, go out and get a job like everyone else."

"And what about the place in my office I was keeping for you?" His father had lines of disappointment almost etched into his face.

"Father, I'm sorry, but it was only a dream, your dream. We'll all understand that eventually. Can we not understand it now?"

"Oh, stop repeating that gardener's mumbo-jumbo."

"I can't bear telling Hannah Mitchell. She's so proud of her son going to do law like his father." Sara Barry's pretty face pouted. Ladies" lunches didn't look so good from this viewpoint.

"What kind of job?" Derek Barry said.

And Quentin knew that Brother Rooney had advised him well. Eventually was now.

He worked first in a seaside cafe south of Dublin, then an Italian restaurant in the city. Then he got a kitchen and bar job in one of the big hotels. This meant antisocial hours, so he moved out of his parents" home and got a bed-sitter. His father didn't seem to notice or care. And his mother was vague and confused about it all.

And eventually he went for an interview in Haywards store where they needed someone in their restaurant. He was interviewed by Harold Hayward, one of the many cousins who worked in the family firm. This was much smarter than the other places he had worked. More like home, in fact, where he had loved helping his mother with her dinner parties.

And this is exactly what Quentin Barry did, imitate his ow n mother's stylish presentation. Soon there were heavy linen napkins, good bone china, and the best of silverware all on display.

He suggested special afternoon teas, with warm scones dripping in butter, served with little bowls of clotted cream and berries to spread on top . . .

He presided over it all as if he loved being there and as if it were his own little kingdom which he had created.

His mother was not best pleased. Quite a lot of the ladies she lunched with went to Haywards. None of their sons worked at tables.

"You could tell them I'm serving my time until I open my own place," Quentin suggested.

I could, I suppose," his mother said doubtfully.

He was shocked. He had been making a joke, and she took it seriously. What was so awful about doing a job he liked? Good, honest work. Sitting around over coffee afterwards, discussing how to make the place even better. His beautiful mother did not call him the Light of her Life or Sweet One these days. Possibly he had given all that up when he had passed on being an accountant.

From time to time, Quentin went to see Brother Rooney back at his old school. He brought the man a packet of cigarettes and they would sit on a carved wooden seat or in the greenhouse. The old man with the pale, watery blue eyes would point out proudly some of the changes there had been since Quentin's last visit. The dramatic difference it had made cutting that hedge right back; there were magical things under it that no one had ever seen and now they were flowering away once they had been given the light.

"Did you miss girls when you came here?" Quentin asked him one day.

"Don't they have girls now?" The school had become coeducational in the last couple of years. It had been a big change.

"No, I meant girlfriends. Did you miss that side of things?"

"No, not at all," Brother Rooney said. Tunny, but it never bothered me at all. I never had a girlfriend, couldn't take to it."

"Would you have preferred fellows, do you think?" Quentin knew the old man wouldn't be offended.

"Divil a bit of it, neither one nor the other, a kind of a eunuch, I suppose. But you know, Quentin, that's not as big a loss as people might think."

I suppose it's a positive benefit, if you're in a religious order and taken a vow of chastity," Quentin smiled at him.

"No, I didn't mean that at all. I meant like if you're not taken up by desire for people then you can see beauty more around you. I see all kinds of colours and textures in flowers and trees that I don't think other fellows see at all." He seemed pleased with himself over the way attributes had been handed out. Some got this, some got that.

"You're one of the happiest people I know, Brother Rooney."

"And if you won't be offended and take it the wrong way, I think you're quite like me, Quentin. You see beauty in things too, and you have great enthusiasms. It does my heart good to hear you talking about that restaurant you run."

"Oh, I don't run it, Brother. I only work there."

"Well, you sound as if you did, and that's a great thing."

"Will you come in and see me there one day?"

I'd feel out of place in a fancy restaurant like that. They'd be looking at my nails and everything."

"They would not. Come in and see me one day."

But Quentin knew that Brother Rooney would not make the journey from the garden where he lived and would probably die without ever visiting him. He wondered, was the old Brother right about Quentin being like him? A eunuch, interested in neither men nor women? It could very possibly be true. Anyway, there was no time to think about it today. The restaurant was full.

The legendary afternoon teas were a huge success; tiny warmed scones with a serving of cream and raspberry jam were disappearing rapidly from trolleys. There was hardly room for all the customers.

"Move that old tramp on, Quentin, will you?" Harold Hayward the manager said with a wave at a shabby man in the corner.

"He's not a tramp. He's just a bit untidy," Quentin protested. Perhaps Brother Rooney had been right and this was not the place for a man with grimy hands.

"Move him on anyway. He's only had a pot of tea in the last hour and there's a line forming at the door."

Quentin went to the table. The man looked up at him from a sheaf of papers. A near-empty teapot sat on the table. Harold the manager had been right. This was not a customer from whom they would make much money this afternoon. But it didn't seem a reason to move him on.

Quentin smiled apologetically at the man, who was in his sixties. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you, sir, but as you can see, people are standing in a long queue waiting for tables."

"Are you asking me to get out?" He had bushy eyebrows, a red weather-beaten face and a slightly Australian accent.

"Certainly not! I just wondered, would you mind if I helped you move your papers so that we could let other people share your table?"

"He asked you to move me on, didn't he?" The old man jerked his head at where Harold Hayward stood watching.

"Now we have room for those two ladies who both have walking sticks. They will appreciate it. May I bring them over?" Quentin was charm itself. He replaced the teapot with a fresh one at no extra charge.

The old man outstayed three sets of people who were brought to his table. At the end of the day he asked Quentin if he was part of the Hayward family himself.

"Alas, no," he smiled apologetically. "Just a labourer in the field, as they say."

"Why do you say "alas"? They can't be any great shakes as a family, judging by the face of the guy who looks as if he swallowed four lemons."

Harold Hayward did indeed look a bit sour.

"Oh, I suppose I meant it would have made life much easier for me if I could have joined the family firm. My father is an accountant and he had my name on a door in his place, but I couldn't face it. At least Harold's family are pleased with him."

The old man came in regularly after that and he always sat at one of Quentin's tables. His name was Toby, shortened to Tobe. He had travelled the world, he said, and seen wonderful things. "Have you travelled?" he asked Quentin.

"No. My problem was that since I decided not to go in with my father, I was so determined to make a living, I never gave myself time to go anywhere. I'd love to see the colours in Provence or in Tuscany, and I'd love to go to North Africa. One day, maybe," he smiled sadly.

"Don't leave it too late, Quentin."

"Eventually should be now," Quentin said, thinking of old Brother Rooney.

"There was never a truer word said." Tobe nodded his head vigorously.

There was no doubt that he looked a lot shabbier than the rest of the clientele. Sometimes Quentin would tell him there was this miracle stain remover he had discovered, and when Harold Hayward was not looking, he would attack a particularly noticeable stain on Tobe's chest. Once he handed him a comb and another time he gave him elastic bands to hold back his frayed cuffs. He didn't know why he did this, probably because he wanted to prove Harold Hayward wrong in his attitude. Also, he knew he wasn't offending Tobe, who was totally unaware that he looked rather eccentric and was perfectly agreeable to being brought courteously more into the mainstream.

And work was becoming Quentin's life. He still had few friends apart from the pleasant and casual relationships with those he worked with and served.

His kindness did not go unnoticed. Even his fellow staff were aware of how well he got on with the customers.

"You're very warm to people," Brenda Brennan said to him one day.

She was one of their part-time staff, but a superior girl, cool and elegant, calm in a crisis and always perfectly capable of dealing with whatever the day might pitch at them.

He wished she would take a permanent job there but she told him that she and her husband had dreams of owning their own place.

"That was a nice gesture," she said to him when she had seen him give the odd refill to Tobe without charging.

"Lord, Brenda, it's only hot water and a teabag," Quentin said. "He's happy here watching people come and go. I like his company. You should hear him talk about those orange and purple sunrises they have out in Australia."

"I wonder what sent him out there all those years ago," Brenda said.

"Probably his family." Quentin was thoughtful. "He never talks about them and it's our families who usually upset us most."

His own father and mother barely spoke to each other now. On the few occasions when he went there to try and cook a lunch, the atmosphere was intolerable. Tobe may have gone through something like that years ago. Quentin wondered where he ate when he did eat. He obviously couldn't afford the prices in Hay wards.

One night by accident he found out. There was such a bad mood in his family home, with his mother retiring to bed and his father sighing and saying he would go to his club, that Quentin had left quietly.

He didn't think that either of them were really aware that he had left. He went to a cafe called Mick's on a corner where he often bought chips on his way home from the cinema, but had never sat down to have a meal.

Beans on toast, fried eggs and chips, two sausages and a spoon of mashed potatoes and peas. That was the choice at Mick's. The place smelled of cooking fat, nobody wiped down the tables, the lino on the floor was torn and yet something about the place itself was enchanting. It was very handy to get at on a corner of a busy street but a little oasis when you went into its cobbled courtyard and closed the door. It was as if the world slowed down there.

Quentin saw Brenda the waitress and her husband Patrick, a serious guy, deep in conversation over their beans and toast. Then he saw Tobe with his plate of sausages, egg and chips.

Tobe waved him over. "If you're not meeting anyone ...?"

"No, indeed, I'd be happy to have your company." Quentin sat down with the older man and they talked about this and that. Neither asking the other what they were doing there.

"See you tomorrow at Haywards," Tobe said.

He paused for ten seconds to greet Brenda and her husband, enough to show them he had noticed them but not enough to intrude on what looked like a very private conversation.

So the weeks went by, and every now and then they met in Mick's for eggs and beans, and Quentin said what he would do with this place if it was his and he had a backer, and Tobe said that his visit was nearing its end and he was going back to Australia.

Quentin told him how his parents would be so much better in two small separate establishments, but that neither of them would budge. Tobe told Quentin that for forty years in Australia he had wondered about his Irish family. Now that he had discovered them he would waste no more time, not one second, wondering about them, they simply weren't worth it.

"You can't have spent much time with them, Tobe. Weren't you in Haywards all day and at Mick's Cafe all night?"

"I saw them all right, and I didn't like what I saw. Have you made your plans to travel, Quentin?"

"Yes, I have got as far as enquiring the price of off-peak travel, it's still very dear. But Tobe, are you changing the subject away from your family? I'll probably never see you again after next week when you go back. I'll go mad wondering what you said to your family and they to you. Can't you tell me?"

"Not yet. I have something to think through. But I'll tell you next week, in Mick's. Would Thursday be all right, do you think?"

At Mick's on Thursday Tobe looked different, more together somehow. "Come on, Quentin, my treat. We'll lash out and have beans and egg and sausages."

It was hard to put a finger on it, but it was as if Tobe had suddenly taken charge. "It's been a great pleasure meeting you. It made my visit to Dublin worthwhile and helped to clear my thoughts. Will you come and see me in Australia in a few years" time?"

"Look, Tobe, I'm having difficulty getting the money to go to Italy or Marrakesh, for heaven's sake. How could I get to Australia? Even if I do want to see the purple and orange sunrises."

"You'll be able to afford it," Tobe said, quite calmly, as if he knew it would happen.

"Oh, I wish," Quentin said, pushing his hair back from his face.

And then Tobe told him the story.

Beginning with his name, which was Toby Hayward.

He was the cousin who didn't fit in, the remittance man who got an allowance as long as he stayed out of the country and far away. He had come back to see the Haywards, but since they didn't know him, he thought he would observe them a bit first. He had seen nothing in their store that he liked, nothing except Quentin. Tobe had done well in Australia, better than any of the Haywards had ever known. It wasn't their business, so he hadn't told them.

And now that he had seen haughty Harold in the restaurant, and arrogant George Hayward in the furniture department, sour and prissy Lucy Hayward in the silver department, he realised they were not people he wanted to be involved with.

Quentin, on the other hand, a boy with a dream who wanted to run a restaurant. Now that was something different. That was what he could pay back to Ireland, the land where he had been born. Quentin would come to a solicitor tomorrow morning with him and then be in a position to buy Mick's Cafe that afternoon.

"This doesn't happen in real life," Quentin said.

"But you believe me, don't you? You believe I have the money and I'm giving it to you. I'm not out of the funny farm or anything."

"Yes, of course I believe you want to do this, and I know I would do the same myself if it were me, so I understand. But it won't work, Tobe."

"Why not?"

"Your family?"

"Don't know I'm home. I'm just the shabby old person they move from section to section of their store."

"They might feel they have a prior claim . . . family money."

"No, I made this money. I worked and invested, and I worked day and night and invested more."

"Maybe you should give it to a charity."

"I've given plenty to charity. I'm just giving you enough to buy this place."

"Maybe Mick won't sell." Quentin was afraid to let himself believe it would happen.

"How much do you think would be a fair price, Quentin?"

Quentin told him.

"Give him half as much again, he'll sell, he'll run out of the place."

"And then?"

"And then you'll call in sick to Haywards tomorrow and we get the money organised."

"This doesn't happen," Quentin said for the second time.

"Mick, could you come over here for a minute, mate?" Tobe called.

And Mick, who was tired and wanted nothing more than to be able to take his wife and handicapped daughter down to the country to live, was summoned to the table to hear the news that would change his life.

Brenda and her friend Nora had been inseparable during catering college. They made plans for life, which varied a bit depending on what was happening. Sometimes they thought they would go to Paris together and learn from a French chef. Then they might set up a thirty-bedroom hotel in the countryside, which would have a waiting list of six months for people trying to come and stay.

In reality, of course, it was slightly different. Shifts here and there and a lot of waitressing. Too many people after the same jobs, plenty of young men and women with experience. Nora and Brenda found it hard going at the start.

So they went to London, where two things of great significance happened. Nora met an Italian man called Mario who said he loved her more than he loved life itself. And Nora certainly loved him as much, if not more.

Brenda at the time caught a heavy cold, which turned into pneumonia, and as a result lost her hearing for a time. She regarded this deafness as a terrible blow. She, who could almost hear the grass grow, before her illness.

I was never sympathetic enough to deaf people," she wept to the busy doctor who gave her leaflets on lip-reading classes and told her to stop this self-pity, her hearing would return in time.

So Brenda went to the classes, mainly much older people, men and women struggling with hearing aids.

She learned how to practise on a VCR machine. You watched the news with the volume turned down over and over until you could guess what they were saying, and then you turned it up very high to check if you were right.

Miss Hill, the teacher, loved Brenda as she was so eager to learn. Brenda learned to study people's faces as they spoke, trying to make sense of what she couldn't hear. She understood that the hard letters to hear were the ones in the middle of a word. Most people could read the word "pay" or "pan", for example, but it was much harder to see a hidden consonant like an l or an r in the middle of a word. Tray" or "plan" were much more difficult to work out. You had to do that from the meaning of the sentence.

Brenda had taken to it all so much, she hardly realised when her normal hearing returned. By this stage she could read conversations across a room.

Nora and Mario were very impressed. "If all else fails, we can put you in a circus," Nora cried, delighted.

"And I will sell tickets outside," Mario promised.

But they all knew this wouldn't happen. Mario was going back shortly to Sicily to marry his fiancee, the girl Gabriella who lived next door to him back there.

Nora knew this too, but she just would not accept it. She was not going to stay in London without Mario, or go back to Ireland to cry over him there. She would follow him to Sicily and all it would bring.

Brenda was lonely in London when her friend had gone. She was bewildered by a love so great that it could withstand such humiliation. In her letters, Nora wrote of how she lived in a bed-sitting-room in the village that looked down on Mario's hotel. How she saw his wedding and the children's christenings and was slowly becoming part of the life of the place.

Brenda could never have loved like that. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever love at all. She came back to Dublin, but it was the same there. Nobody filled her days and nights with passion like Mario had been able to do for Nora O'Donoghue. Everyone said that Brenda was cool and calm in a crisis, a great reliable person to have around if someone spilled the gravy or dropped a tray. Brenda wondered was she going to be like that all her life, look calm and unflappable? Never in love like the couples she served at table, never upset and aching like the colleagues she consoled in kitchens when their love affairs were shaky. Never to marry even as two of her younger sisters had married, with huge drama and great expenditure of nerves. Brenda had been there, cups of tea, aspirins and calm advice at the ready.

She didn't know why she went to the dance that night. Possibly to have something to write to Nora about. It was for past pupils of their catering college. Maybe she hoped she might hear of some job opportunities.

She wore the new dress she had bought for her sister's wedding. It was very dressy, cream lace with a rose-pink jacket. It looked well with her dark hair. She thought that she got many admiring looks, but perhaps she was only imagining it.

Across the room she suddenly saw Pillowcase. Now she couldn't remember why she and Nora had called him that, an over-serious fellow, head in his books, barely any time to socialise. She heard he had gone to some high-flying place in Scotland, that he had been with a pastry cook in France. What was he doing back here? And even more important, what was his name? Paddy . .. Pat?

She looked over at him. As clearly as if the words were written like subtitles, she read his lips and heard him say to the man he was with, "Will you look at that. It's Brenda O'Hara from our year in college. Isn't she a very fine looking girl? I haven't seen her in years. Very classy, altogether." He seemed full of admiration.

The man he was with, a loudmouth whom Brenda knew around town, said, "Oh, you'll get nowhere there. Real ice maiden, let me tell you."

"Well, I'll go over and say hallo. She can't take offence at that." He walked towards her.

Sometimes she felt a little guilty at having advance knowledge because of her extra hearing due to the lip-reading. Why hadn't the other said his name, so that at least she'd know that much?

Pillowcase approached her with a broad smile. He had smartened himself up. He looked taller, or else he didn't crouch over so much.

"Patrick Brennan," he said as he shook her hand.

"Brenda O'Hara, delighted to see you again." She must beat the silly nickname out of her mind.

"Don't I remember you and Nora O'Donoghue very well, and is she here tonight as well?"

"Sometime when you have an hour, remind me to tell you what happened to Nora," Brenda laughed.

"I have an hour and more now, Brenda," he said.

Would she have seen the admiration in his face anyhow, or was it because she had lip-read his praise of her that Brenda turned her charm on Patrick Brennan?

Whatever it was, she saw him most evenings for the next two weeks. He seemed pleased that she still lived with her family.

"I'd have thought a glamour girl like you would have gone off with a rich man long ago," he teased.

"No, no, I'm an ice maiden, didn't they tell you that?" she teased him back.

"I think I heard it said." He shuffled awkwardly.

She wrote about him to Nora. He's still very serious about work. He'd rather do nothing than work for a place that he doesn't think is worth it. He says I'm wasting myself doing waitress shifts here, there and anywhere. He'll do construction work or delivering cases of wine rather than work in a kitchen which would give him a bad name. But I don't agree. It's all work. You're learning all the time and anyway, he's a man who doesn't even have a flat of his own. He sleeps on people's sofas or floors. He doesn't notice. He told her about the small farm in the country where he grew up; how his younger brother, who wasn't exactly simple-minded but not far off it, lived there still. She told him about the corner shop where her father had worked so hard to make a living. They went to the cinema and sometimes she paid if Patrick had no money. They went to Mick's Cafe for old times" sake.

One lunchtime as she unpacked their sandwiches to eat by the Grand Canal, she said to him firmly that she had her own plans as to how they would spend the evening.

I live at home, Patrick. For over a month now I've been going out every single night with you."

"Yes?" He looked anxious.

"So I'd like to let them see you, know the kind of person I'm meeting."

"Sure."

"No, you don't understand. It's not for them to inspect you. It's not a gun to your head. It's common courtesy."

"No, I agree entirely. I thought you were going to say you were tired of going out with me. When we have a daughter won't we feel the very same way about her, want to know her friends?"

"What?" said Brenda.

"When we have a daughter. It's not the same with sons."

"But what are you saying, exactly?"

He looked at her, bewildered. "When we're married. We will have children, won't we?" He was genuinely concerned.

"Patrick, excuse me. Did I miss something here? Did you ask me to marry you? Did I say yes? It's quite a big thing. I should have remembered it, I know I should."

He held her hand. "You will, won't you?" he begged.

"I don't know, Patrick. I really don't know yet."

"What else would you do?" he said, alarmed.

"Well, a number of things. I might marry no one. Or I might marry someone else as yet un-met. Or I might marry you in the fullness of time when we know that we love each other."

"But don't we know now?"

"No, we don't. We haven't talked about it at all."

"We haven't stopped talking about what we'll do," he said.

"But that's work, Patrick, what jobs we'll get."

"No, it's about what kind of life we'll live. I thought it was about our life together."

"This is nonsense, Patrick." She stood up, upset. "You can't take us for granted like that. We're not even lovers." She was very indignant.

"It's not for want of trying," he protested.

"Not on the sofa of some ghastly flat with half of Dublin about to walk through the door with cans of Guinness any minute."

"So what do you want, Brenda? A night in a b. & b. and for me to go down on one knee? Is that it?"