Quentins

"No." She was hurt and angry. "Not that at all. It sounds ludicrous. I do like you, Patrick, you fool. Why else was I inviting you home? But I wanted love and passion and desire and all those things too. Not a casual munching on a sandwich and talking about our daughter as if it were all planned."

"I'm sorry I did it wrong," he said.

"If I thought you loved me and would take any kind of job like I do while saving for a home, and if you talked more rather than having glum silences about your future. And if you asked me properly and . . . well, if you desired me ... I can't think of a better word, then I would strongly think of marrying you, and sooner rather than later. But it's useless now, because if you do all those things it's only my having written the script and my having fed you the lines."

"So I can't come to supper? Is this what you're saying?" he asked.

"No, you clown, come to supper," she said, and went away fast before he could see the tears in her eyes. That night she reassured her mother that there was nothing in it.

"He's just a friend, Mam, a quiet friend without much to say for himself. Can't anyone of your sex-mad older generation realise that people in their twenties can be friends these days?"

At supper, Patrick Brennan brought flowers to her mother and sat down to have chicken and ham pie. And from the moment he came in the door, he never stopped talking. He praised the lightness of the pastry and flavour of the sauce. He admired the cushion covers which Mrs. O'Hara had embroidered. He begged to see the wedding albums. He asked Mr. O'Hara where he got fresh vegetables and told him of a cheaper place. And when they were all worn out trying to get a word in edgeways, he told them all, her two younger sisters included, that he loved Brenda but up to now had no prospects and no hope of being able to make a home for her. But suddenly on the canal bank he had got enlightenment and he realised it was a matter of any old job in catering until they had a home and could go and build their dream. The O'Haras were astonished at him. Brenda was dumbfounded. When he left, they said he was a very nice fellow indeed, gabby though, very over-talkative, hyper almost. Hadn't Brenda said he was quiet?

"I got it wrong," Brenda said humbly. In weeks he had found them a job together, Patrick as chef and Brenda as front-of-house manager. "You despise this kind of place," she said. "What does it matter, Brenda? A month's salary and we'll have our bed-sitter," he said. "We can have it now, from my savings," she said. They found one that day, and they practised passion and desire that night and found it fine. They were married very shortly after that, a simple wedding with just cake and wine. It was a beautiful cake made and iced by Patrick and much photographed. There was a series of jobs, none of them really satisfactory, none of them giving scope to what they thought the}" could do. But they had no money, no one to back them, to set them up in a place where they could make their mark.

And as time went by there was no sign of the daughter they had spoken of, or the son. But they were still young and perhaps it was better that they didn't have to worry yet about raising a family.

They worked in a place which only served food smothered in batter. In another where there was after-hours drinking and people wanted omelettes way into the night. They tried to take over an office canteen but were given so little money, it was impossible to present decent food. Finally, they were in a place where they realised that tax avoidance and cutting corners were going to have it closed down. This last place began to break their hearts. Particularly since the management was supercilious and snobbish and made the guests feel uneasy.

"We'll have to leave here," Brenda said. "If you saw how they humiliate people in the dining-room."

"Don't let's go until we have somewhere else," Patrick begged.

The very next night Brenda saw the nice boy Quentin Barry, whom she often met when doing extra afternoon shifts at Haywards. He was with his mother and had chosen a quiet table far across the room from her.

It was a quiet night. She had served her tables. Quietly she took off her shoes as she stood behind a serving table with its long tablecloths hiding her indiscretion from the restaurant. Her shoes were tight and high and she had been on her feet since 8 a.m. It was bliss to be in her stockinged feet.

She looked across at the mother and son talking. Very alike in blonde and handsome looks, but not in manner. Mrs. Barry was fussy and very self-conscious. Quentin was gentle and a listener. But not tonight. He was telling his mother about something that seemed to astonish her.

Automatically, Brenda tuned in. She didn't have any sense of eavesdropping, to her this was as if they were speaking at the top of their voices.

"You only get peanuts, working as a waiter," Sara Barry was saying.

"I got enough working there to keep myself for several years." Quentin was quiet.

"Yes, but you can't buy a place, Quentin. Be serious, sweetheart. You're not the kind of person who can buy a place and make a restaurant out of it."

"It's not very smart now. In fact, Mick's Cafe, well, it's very down at heel, but if I get the right people

"No, darling, listen to me. You know nothing of business. You'd be bankrupt in a month .. ."

Til get people who would know, people who were trained, who would do it right."

"You'd tire of it every day. The anxiety ..."

"I wouldn't be there. I'd be travelling."

"I feel quite weak, Quentin," Sara said.

"No, Mother. Don't feel weak. I just wanted you to know how happy I am. I haven't been happy for a very long time. You used to tell me I was the love and the light of your life. I thought you'd be pleased to know I am so happy."

Brenda then for the first time realised she was in a private conversation and looked away. She put on her shoes, walked to the kitchen on unsteady feet.

"Patrick," she said, "could you pour me a small brandy?"

"You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"I've seen our future," she said.

And in a matter of days it was sorted out.

It would be their future to turn Mick's Cafe into the restaurant they had always dreamed of.

"What will you call it?" they asked Quentin.

"If you don't think it's too arrogant, I think my own name," he said shyly. "And now can I ask you one thing, how did you hear I was buying Mick's place? I know he didn't tell anyone, and I didn't tell anyone. So it's a mystery," he smiled.

Brenda paused. "I don't put it on my CV. It's not a nice quality. But I lip-read. I heard you telling your mother." She looked down.

"It's a good quality to have when you run a restaurant," Quentin said. "I bet we'll be glad of it through the years."

Blouse Brennan No one could remember why he was called Blouse Brennan. No one except his big brother Patrick. Blouse was a bit slow at school, but he was very willing so they didn't make fun of him. The Brothers liked him, Blouse was always there to do a message, run down town and get them a pack of cigarettes, and the shopkeepers never minded giving them to Blouse though he was well underage, because you'd know they weren't for himself.

The other boys decided that Blouse was not to be tormented because of his brother Patrick. Patrick was built like a tank and you'd be a foolish lad to take him on. So Blouse lived a fairly peaceful life for a guy who couldn't play games properly, who stumbled over his shoes and couldn't remember more than two lines of poetry no matter how long he studied.

When Patrick left school to serve his time in a hotel, Blouse worried. "They might beat me when you're gone next term," he said fearfully.

"They won't." Patrick was a man of few words.

"But you won't be there, Patrick."

Til come in once a week until they understand," Patrick said. And true to his word, he was there on the first day of term walking idly around the schoolyard, giving a cuff here, a push there to establish a presence. Anyone who had even contemplated picking on Blouse Brennan had a severe change of mind.

Patrick Brennan would be back.

Patrick came home every weekend and always took his brother out for a run. The boy could talk to him in a way he didn't talk at home. Their parents were elderly and distant. Too absorbed in making a living from the smallholding with its few animals and its rocky soil.

"Why do they call me Blouse, do you know, Patrick?"

"Sure, they have to call you something, they call me Pillowcase at work." Patrick was shruggy about it all.

"I've no idea how it all came about," Blouse said sadly.

Patrick knew that it had all started when the lad had been heard calling his shirt his blouse years back and some of the kids picked up on the name.

For some reason it had stuck. Even the Brothers called him that, and half the people in the town. His mother and father called him Sonny so hardly anyone knew that he had been baptised Joseph Matthew Brennan. Patrick worked very hard in the hotel business. He rose from scullery helper to kitchen hand, he did stints as a porter and at the front desk, and went to do a catering course where he eventually met a girl called Brenda and brought her photograph home for inspection.

"She's got a lovely smile," said Blouse.

"She looks healthy enough," his father admitted grudgingly.

"Not a girl to settle in the land, I'd say," his mother complained.

"Well, that's also for the best then, since Brenda and I haven't a notion of running this place, Blouse will be in charge here in the fullness of time."

Patrick spoke very definitely.

The parents, as was their custom, said nothing at all.

And that was the day Blouse got his great bout of confidence. He was fourteen years old, but one day he would be a landowner. That made him superior to nearly everyone else in his class at school. He made the mistake of telling Horse Harris who was a bully, and Horse mocked him and pushed him around. "Squire Blouse", he kept calling him.

Patrick made one appearance in the schoolyard and rearranged the nose of Horse Harris. Nothing more was said, the word "Squire" was never mentioned again.

One day Patrick bought Blouse a pint and said that when he and Brenda married, he would like Blouse to be their best man.

"Imagine, you a married man with a home of your own," Blouse said.

"You're always welcome to come and see us, stay the night, even a weekend."

"I know, but I wouldn't have much call going to Dublin. What would a fellow called Blouse be doing in a big city?" he asked.

Patrick brought Brenda home for a visit.

Very good-looking, Blouse thought, and confident. Not like people round here. She was very polite to his mother and father, helped with the washing up, and didn't mind the big hairy dog pawing her smart skirt.

She explained to Blouse and Patrick's mother that the wedding would be performed by her uncle who was a priest, and she reassured their father that it would be a very small affair, only twenty people at the most. They were going to have a beautiful wedding cake and bottles of wine.

Wouldn't people think it off not to have plates of cold chicken and ham? Blouse's mother wanted to know.

Apparently not in Dublin, where people were as odd as two left shoes.

There was a lot of groaning and grumbling when the day came. Blouse drove his parents to the railway station and Patrick met them in Dublin. Blouse wondered how anyone could live in a place as full of noise and strangers as Dublin, but he said nothing, just smiled at everyone and shook hands when it seemed the right thing to do.

He thought the meal was extraordinary all right, no bit of dinner, but the cake was a miracle. Imagine, his own big brother had iced it and done all those curly bits himself and the pink writing too with the names and the date.

He was taking his parents home on the five o"clock train. There had been no question of an overnight in Dublin. It would have been too much for them.

Brenda, his new sister-in-law, had been very kind. "When we get a place with more room than just the floor, Blouse, you'll come and stay with us. We'd like that and we'll show you Dublin."

Til do that one day, maybe even drive the whole way in the van," Blouse said proudly.

It would be something to think about, look forward to.

Something to say around the village. "My sister-in-law in Dublin wants me to go and stay."

His father got a pain in his chest and died three months after Patrick's wedding. His mother seemed to think it was just one more low in life, like the hens not laying properly or the blight in the apple trees. Blouse looked after her the best he could. And time went on the way it always had.

There weren't any girlfriends because Blouse said he wasn't really at ease with girls. He never understood what they were laughing at, and if he laughed too they stopped laughing. But he wasn't lonely. He even went to Dublin to see his brother and sister-in-law. He drove the van the whole way.

Brenda and Patrick worried about how Blouse would cope with the traffic, but it wasn't necessary. He arrived at the house without a bother.

"I meant to tell you about the quays being one way," Patrick said.

"That wasn't a problem," Blouse said. He sat eagerly like a child waiting to be entertained.

They talked to him easily and told him how they were hoping to get a job running a really classy restaurant for a man called Quentin Barry.

"It has all been due to Brenda," Patrick said proudly. She had managed to find them this opportunity just at the right time.

Quentin Barry had come into some money, bought Mick's Cafe and wanted to set up a restaurant. He needed a chef and manager.

If this were to happen!

If they got this place going properly they were made, because the man would hardly be back at all, they could put their own stamp on the restaurant.

Blouse wasn't a drinker, but he had a glass of champagne with them to celebrate. When he got home, his mother said that Horse Harris had been around to talk business about the farm.

"What did Horse want to know?" Blouse was worried. Horse had never been good news. Apparently he had talked business with his mother. That was all she would say. Blouse wondered should he tell Patrick all about it, but no, they were too busy and excited. They had got the job working for this man Quentin who was going to let them set up their own class of a place. It wouldn't be fair, boring them with matters like Horse Harris coming to the farm and Mam's refusal to talk about it all. I I

Brenda wrote a note every week as regular as clockwork, and Patrick wrote a few lines at the end.

"I don't know what it is that has her writing all that nonsense every week, and putting a stamp on it," Mrs. Brennan said. "Too little to do, that's her problem."

But Blouse liked it. He told Horse one day that he got a letter every week from Dublin.

"Don't bother your barney replying to those two, they're after the place, that's all," Horse had said scathingly. Blouse went to take his mother her mug of tea and found her dead. He knelt down beside her bed and said a prayer, then he got the doctor, the priest and Shay Harris, the undertaker. When he had everything organised he phoned Patrick and Brenda.

There were a respectable number of people there.

"You're very much liked here, Blouse," Patrick said to him.

"Aw, sure, they all liked Mam and Dad," Blouse said.

Shay Harris asked if Patrick was going to take his things with him when he was going back to Dublin.

"What things?" Patrick asked.

And they learned that Shay's brother Horse had bought the little farm. His money "was in the bank safe and sound, it was all legal and documented. Blouse would have to leave in a month.

Patrick was incensed but, oddly, Brenda didn't agree. "He'd be far too lonely here on his own, Patrick. He would become a recluse. Tell him to come and live with us in Dublin."

"Blouse would be lost in Dublin," said Patrick.

Blouse couldn't believe it all. "I'm too stupid to live anywhere," he said sadly. I should have told you about Horse coming round here, but I was afraid you'd think I wanted you to come down and hit him for me again."

"My days of belting people are over, Blouse," Patrick said.

"You'll come and be near us," Brenda said. "You'll have your own money from the sale of the farm, so when you want to find a place for yourself you can, and you'd be a great help to us."

"What could I do? I only dig fields and mind sheep and collect eggs from under the hens."

"Couldn't you do that for us in Dublin too?" Brenda suggested.

Patrick looked at her, bewildered.

"Well, maybe not the sheep, but we could get an allotment."

"A what?"

"Allotment. You know, Blouse. They must have them in country towns too. Big bits of waste ground and everyone rents a patch and grows their own things on it, digs and plants and harvests."

"And who would it belong to?" Blouse was confused.

"Well, whoever owns the bit of ground, I suppose. I'll bring you and show you. They have little sheds and huts to put your shovels and forks in and big fences of wire to grow things up against, and what you grow you keep."

Even his brother Patrick seemed to think it was a good idea. "We could put that on the menu ... organic vegetables, fresh free range eggs," he said.

"But where would I live?" Blouse began.

"There are plenty of places letting rooms near here. I'll ask around and find out," Patrick said.

"And you could eventually come and live with us, of course," said Brenda. "There's a warren of old rooms in the back and upstairs. They're in the most desperate state at the moment but it will all look fine in time. We've done our room upstairs so when we have time to get the rubble cleared out, we'll paint one of them for you. You could help choose the paint and all."

His mother had never asked him what colour room he'd like. Blouse had always wanted yellow walls and a white ceiling. He had seen a room like that in a magazine and thought it would be very cheerful with a tartan bedspread. And now he was going to have one of his own.

I'd love to see the place and have a vision of it," he said.

There was something about the way he said "vision" that made Brenda and Patrick feel choked up.

They had a million other things to do which were higher priority than finding Blouse somewhere to stay but that's not the way it seemed now.

"Come on and we'll take you to see where you might live," Brenda said.

Once they arrived at the shambles that was going to be their beloved restaurant they found themselves leading Blouse off to the storehouses, outhouses and falling-down rooms that formed the back of Quentins.

Blouse found a room that suited him well. He was not one to sit down and talk about things. "Will I start on it now, do you think, Brenda?" he asked with his big, innocent smile.

She seemed to have tears in her eyes when she said that would be great, but he might have imagined it.

He got a wheelbarrow and got rid of the rubble. Blouse wanted the room to be nice and empty when they brought up all the furniture from home, from the little farm that Horse Harris had bought. They would bring the bed he had slept in all his life and the grandfather clock.

"Maybe I'll clear out a few other rooms for you," Blouse offered. "We have a lot of furniture coming up from home, and if in the future you could offer the staff living accommodation you might get them cheaper."

They looked at him in amazement. It was all coming together. Thanks to Blouse. And it was arranged much more speedily than anyone could have believed.

Patrick managed to call and see Horse Harris before they left the town with every stick of furniture on board a huge rented van.

"Glad there are no hard feelings," Horse said with the horrible smile of a man who knew he had beaten the slightly simple Blouse Brennan and his smart-arse brother.

"None at all, Horse," said Patrick, giving him a handshake that could have broken every finger in Horse's hand and a twist of the wrist that could have and did twist the muscle.

Horse had no grounds to complain. Blouse worked hard on the allotment. He drove there every day in the old van that had belonged to his parents. He learned about new vegetables that had never been part of his life back home. He had two dozen Rhode Island Reds who laid big fresh eggs and he was planning to get two dozen more.

Some evenings he helped behind the scenes in the restaurant. Blouse never minded what he was asked to do. Take out the rubbish, stack the dish-washing machines. He moved out of Patrick's house and got himself a little place near the allotment so that he could keep an eye on the hens. He had a lock on their coop at night, but it was nice to be near them.

A young, businesslike woman called on him one day. She said she was Mary O'Brien, and she had been given his address by Mrs. Brennan in Quentins. She was anxious to do an article in a magazine about keeping hens and growing vegetables and she wondered if she could discuss the finer points with him.

They sat and talked, and he stroked the feathers of the hens as he spoke, and he picked out seedlings to show her how they should be planted.

Mary said she hadn't enjoyed herself so much for ages, and now could he show her where to get the bus back to the office?

"Don't you have a car?" Blouse thought she was a smart kind of person who would definitely be driving an office car and changing it every eighteen months.

"I'm afraid to drive. I've tried lessons, but I always panic," she admitted.

"Ah no, it's very simple," Blouse explained. "When you panic you just indicate and pull in, that's what I always did for years and I drive now like as if I had wings." He gave her a lift back in his battered van, and pretended he was anxious now and then.

"I don't like the look of that big bus bearing down on me. I see a place on my side so I'll indicate and move in until we catch our breath and then we can go."

Mary O'Brien looked at him with amazement. "Would you teach me to drive?" she begged.

"Oh, no, I'm not qualified. I'm only an eejit. You have to go to a professional, they wouldn't want a half-wit like me to be taking away their living."

She shook his hand and said she'd send a photographer out to his allotment. "You're no eejit, don't put yourself down. I really hope I'll see you again," she said.

Blouse felt terrific. He knew she meant it. "If you got a nice driving teacher, maybe he'd let me sit at the back of the car as a kind of support," he said.

"I think that wouldn't be a problem," said Mary O'Brien.

They were loath to part.

"You'll be famous after this article, Blouse Brennan. Self sufficiency guru, they'll call you. Well, I'll call you that anyway, and then other people will."

"Imagine," he said.

"Oh, by the way, about your name . . . your brother said your real name was

"I'm happy with Blouse," he said quickly.

"I think you're right. If I had a name like that, I'd keep it," Mary O'Brien said wistfully.

"I'll give you a ring when the photographer has been and gone," said Blouse Brennan, who had never had his picture taken professionally and never telephoned a girl before in his life. Longings Brenda had been very sure that she would conceive quickly. Her mother had given birth to five daughters and there were hints that there would have been many more had not great abstinence been practised. Two of her sisters had what were called honeymoon babies, and apart from her friend Nora out in Italy, everyone else that she knew had children. In fact, there were times when she feared that pregnancy might come too early and leave her unable to cope. In those years she had thought about it from time to time. But now, with the eighteen-hour days they often worked at the setting up of Quentins, in those early, exhausting months dealing with builders, planning the layout of the kitchens and the dining area, the setting up of suppliers, it was the furthest thing from their minds.

When it got a little calmer, after the opening of the restaurant when Quentin had gone away with an easy heart to Morocco to leave them totally in charge, Brenda began to th ink about it all again. They had been many years married now, both of them apparently fit and strong.

"About us having children?" she began one evening when they were sitting with mugs of tea in the kitchen they had insisted on having in their upstairs flat. Even though they would live over one of the best kitchens in Dublin, they didn't want to go down there if they needed a scrambled egg.

She saw Patrick's eyes light up and he reached for her hand. "Brenda, no?" There was such hope in his voice and face.

"No, sadly no." She tried to keep her own voice light and not to dwell on the sense of loss she had just noticed.

He got up to try and hide his face. "Sorry, I just thought when you said about us having children," he muttered away from her.

She sat still. "I know. I want it as much as you do, Patrick. So don't you think we should talk?"

"I didn't think that's how you got children, by talking," he said in a slightly mutinous way. He didn't usually have a tone like that. She decided to ignore it.

"No, I agree with you, but we do a fair amount of what does get children as well and it's not working, so I wondered, should we go and get ourselves looked at, if you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean," Patrick Brennan said. "And I'm not crazy about the sound of it."

The neither, a lot of legs in stirrups and things," Brenda said. "But if it works, then it will have been worth it."

"When you think of what you read in the papers, half the country seems to get pregnant after one drunken fumble on a Friday night," Patrick grumbled.

"So will I make an appointment for us with Dr. Flynn?" Brenda asked.

"Does he see us both together, do you think?" Patrick wondered.

"Probably for a chat, I'd say, and then he sends us off for tests."

They both thought about the whole undertaking ahead with no pleasure at all. They didn't book the appointment that week, because it was the week the inspectors were coming to check the ventilation. Nor the next because there was the huge excitement that Blouse Brennan and Mary O'Brien announced they would marry. Nor the week after, as there were several intense social visits with the O'Brien family, who had to be convinced that a man called Blouse was the right match for their daughter.

And then there were the meetings with Quentin's accountants, with the bank, and with lawyers. Even the meeting with the sign painter, who was coming to put their name up, took far longer than it should have. It was in heavy gold paint on very dark rich green: a huge Q in front and a hanging sign with the name on the side. They looked at it in disbelief. The whole word ran into one; the painter had put no apostrophe after the name.

"But we showed you, Brian, look at the drawings, we agreed."

I know, it's a mystery all right." Brian scratched his head.

"Brian, we could have had really good painters like the Kennedy

Brothers and instead we took you to give you a start, and what happens? We're the laughing stock of Dublin, that's what. We can't spell the name of our own place. That's what people will say."

Brian saw the two upset faces looking up at the sign. Til give it to you for nothing. Can't be fairer than that, can I?" he asked.

They asked Quentin on his weekly phone call.

"I was never one for punctuation. I'd prefer it the way your painter did it," he said.

So week after week went by without Brenda and Patrick Brennan thinking they had the luxury of an hour or two to visit the doctor about something which was not after all a serious illness.

And often at night, after their long, busy days, they reached for each other in their big double bed with the white lace curtains around it. If they thought that maybe the whole matter would right itself before they needed to discuss it with Dr. Flynn, neither of them said anything about it at all. Blouse and Mary had a small wedding and a week's honeymoon on an organic farm in Scotland. They came home full of further ideas of what they could grow. Blouse was a married man now. No more living in a shed up beside the allotment. No, indeed. They had transformed the small room at the back of Quentins, taking in other storerooms, and made the whole thing into a perfect little apartment.

Mary got herself a regular column in a newspaper where she became highly respected as an adviser on growing your own vegetables in a small space. She even appeared on television programmes as an expert on the subject, her wonderful red curls bobbing and her eyes dancing as she spoke of her husband Blouse, without any self-consciousness about the name but with huge pride in the man.

Blouse grew more confident every day and no day did he seem more happy and self-assured than the day he told Patrick and Brenda that they were expecting a child. Four months married, and now this great news.

They managed to show their enthusiasm and hide their jealousy until they were alone that night in their bedroom. They tried to be generous but it was hard. The sense of unfairness was all around them. Although they sat side by side there was a huge gulf between them. Their shoulders didn't even touch. "I will be all right," Brenda said.

"Of course it will," Patrick said.

Til ring Dr. Flynn tomorrow," she promised. "To wave his magic wand."

When they got into bed, she put her arm around him. At bad times they were a great consolation to each other. So often making love had washed away the cares and anxieties of the day.

But not tonight.

"I'm tired, love," he said, and turned on one side away from her.

Brenda lay awake all night looking at the walls covered with pictures and memories. Even though her limbs were aching with fatigue, she couldn't find any sleep. Dr. Flynn was pleasant and technical and made them feel that he was not sounding overly intimate when he asked questions about whether full penetrative intercourse had taken place. He then sent them both to a hospital for a series of tests and asked them to come back in six weeks.

It was a strange time in their lives. They made love only twice and a third time, when it had seemed likely, Patrick said there was no point as it was the wrong time of the month for Brenda, nothing would come of it.

And during all this time, Mary patted her small bump proudly and Blouse talked about the responsibilities of fatherhood ahead of him.

Every woman Brenda met seemed to be talking about children, for good or evil. Either they were such darlings and so wonderful that the women couldn't bear to go out to work and leave them. Or else they were as troublesome as weasels, snarling and ungrateful, and if their mothers could get rid of them legally they would.

And Brenda listened and smiled.

The only person who understood was her friend Nora, miles and miles away in Sicily. Nora who could never tell the village that she loved Mario, even though many of them may have suspected. Sometimes people then said to Signora, which was what they called her, not Nora, that she was lucky to be childless, not to have the problems they had. But Nora would sit at her window and watch Mario playing in the square with his boys. How she yearned for a little dark curly-haired baby of his to hold in her arms. She longed with such an ache that she nearly convinced herself he might leave Gabriella and his other children and stay with her if she were to produce a baby for him.

But fortunately she had never tested the theory.

Brenda wrote to Nora as she could write to no one close. She wrote one night as Patrick slept on deeply on his side of the bed: He doesn't love me as me any more. He will only consider touching me when I am meant to be most fertile. The tests showed that there is nothing preventing us conceiving. I ovulate normally. Patrick's sperm count is normal. They keep telling us we're not ready for fertility drugs yet. Patrick just keeps wondering how old do we have to get? I don't know any more, Nora, I really don't. You keep hearing of people having eleven embryos with fertility drugs. Then Mary and Blouse will have their baby next week. And I have to be glad and delighted and thrilled. I feel so mean-spirited not to be. Patrick didn't want to talk about it. "What do you mean, how do I feel about Blouse being able to father a child when I'm not? How do you think I feel?" he snapped.

"I didn't put it that way." Tears of hurt sprang in Brenda's eyes.

"It's what you meant, though, Brenda. The fool of the family is able to get his girl pregnant but you can't say the same for the elder brother."

I will not have you speak of Blouse that way, Patrick. You never did before. You never let anyone else do so. He told me you used to go to his schoolyard and fight battles with anyone who made such a remark, and now you're doing it yourself."

He felt ashamed, she could see it, his head hung down. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came into me."

"What came into you is what's in me too, a longing, a longing to have a child of our own, no wonder it unbalances us, Patrick."

"You're not unbalanced about it. You're very calm," he said.

"No, that's my way of coping, pretend everything's normal and it may become normal."

"I'm sorry, Brenda. It's hard on you too. I'm not trying to excuse myself for anything. It's just sometimes when I'm as tired as a dog at the end of a day, I wonder what it's all for."

"All what?"

"All the hard work. What are we doing it for, exactly?"

Brenda thought they were doing it for themselves, for each in other, for the shared dream. But she knew she must speak very carefully. "I know, I feel the same," she said slowly.

"You do?" He seemed surprised.

"Well, of course I do, Patrick. What do you think I feel?"

"It's just that last month you said . .. when we realised once more that it hadn't happened .. . you said maybe, just maybe, it was all for the best for the moment."

"What would you have preferred, that I would have opened my mouth and howled out from the bathroom in front of everyone, the suppliers, the customers, Blouse and Mary, anyone else passing through, that yet again we had failed to make a child? Should I have sobbed and upset everyone? You tell me, so that I'll do it right next month."

He put his arms around her and she cried into his chest for about fifteen minutes before her shoulders stopped shaking. Then he held her away from him and he looked at her tear-stained face. "Come on, now, put on your face for both of us, brave Brenda Brennan," he said, and kissed her for the first time in a long time. Mary and Blouse had a little boy. They called him Brendan Patrick. He was perfect.

Brenda went in to see him every day. His little fingers tightened over hers. He smiled sleepily up at her. He would stop crying when she held him. She was good with children. One day she would have one of her own.

She rang Dr. Flynn and said yes to any fertility drugs available, including experimental ones. He urged caution and waiting. She said there wasn't any question of that any more.

She kept the smile of welcome and delight about little Brendan Patrick nailed to her face. She was sure that nobody saw in her face the yearning, the longing for her own child. Then one day her lip reading skills showed her a conversation between Blouse and Mary.

"Isn't it great that Brenda loves him so much?" Blouse was saying. V: "

"Yes, but I think we shouldn't boast about him so much," Mary said.

"Boast? Doesn't she admire him and talk about him just like us?" Blouse was astonished.

"It's just that she might have wanted one of her own," said little Mary O'Brien with the red curls and the perfect new baby.

There were reasons why the drugs didn't seem to suit. High blood pressure, allergies, centra-indications. In vitro fertilisation had a very long waiting list. Brenda never really understood what each problem was because the shroud of disappointment was so great, and the hard lines of Patrick's face more firmly etched.

Dr. Flynn tried to explain it to them. He got the feeling he was talking to two brick walls. He talked about resuming and keeping up the active happy sex life they had told him they had before. He mentioned adoption tentatively. Very often this was a wonderful thing, not only in itself but it had the additional side effect of leaving the parents more relaxed and therefore having a successful conception.

They said nothing.

Dr. Flynn said that adoption wasn't as easy as it used to be, too many people chasing after a small pool of babies. The days were gone when single girls gave up their babies to orphanages or for adoption. Very much healthier attitude, of course, but not helpful when you were looking for a child.

And of course there was the age factor, nobody over forty was really in with a chance of adopting, so it would have to be speedy if they wanted to try and apply.

To the outside world, nothing had changed, but for the great team that had been Brenda and Patrick Brennan, something had. Only those very close to them guessed that there was anything wrong at all. Blouse and Mary thought the couple were very overworked, that they didn't seem to laugh as much as they had in earlier times. Brenda's mother noticed nothing except that any time she was unwise enough to enquire about the patter of tiny feet, she got a very short answer.

Quentin Barry noticed in his weekly phone call that the same spark wasn't there in Brenda.

He put it down to strain and rules and regulations and anxiety. "Don't kill yourselves," he wrote kindly. I know that we won't be trading at a profit for quite a long time. My accountant barks much more loudly than he bites. Together we will have something marvellous, don't lose your passion and fire over this."

If Patrick and Brenda had both read his instructions about not losing fire and passion with a wry laugh they said nothing to each other. They had been serving food and changing everything restlessly for months now.

There were so many teething troubles. Who would have known that parking would be such a nightmare. That taxi firms would be so likely to let them down. That the fish catch would be so unreliable at times. That well-known people would have used-up credit cards. That people would steal ashtrays and linen napkins. They learned, slowly and sometimes bitterly. This was the first time they had run their own place. Or Quentin's place. He had told them to think of it as theirs.

But when Brenda saw Patrick sighing, she remembered how he had asked, "What's it all for? What am I doing all this for?" Her heart was heavy.

By the time the end of their first year approached, Brenda had lost a great deal of weight and looked very tired. Mary, Blouse's wife, who looked blooming in motherhood, was also, it appeared, able to hold down a series of jobs as well. Through her contacts she had arranged huge publicity for the first anniversary party.

Three nights before the event, when every catastrophe that could have happened had happened, Patrick and Brenda were still in the restaurant kitchen at 3 a.m. They had lived through a day when a car had reversed into one of their windows, leaving broken glass and a whistling wind until the whole thing could be boarded up and made to appear like a bomb site. Then there had been a gas leak, a shelf containing a lot of valuable produce collapsing, and a lavatory in the ladies" room overflowing. Somebody had sent back the fish because it tasted "funny" and everyone else felt uneasy about their portions, which had tasted fine up to then. One of the waiters had left because he said, frankly, the place was a shambles and would never take off as a top-class place to work.

"What are we doing it for?" Patrick asked again.

"Sorry, Patrick?"

"You heard me. What's it for? I'm bloody exhausted. You're like skin and bone. You've aged twenty years. We were mad to try to do all this. Crazy, that's what we were ..."

"Would it have been worth it if we had a child or even the prospect of one, do you think? Would it have made sense out of a day from hell like today?"

"You know it would."

"No, I don't. We would have been just as tired, even more so."

"You know what I mean. There would have been some sort of purpose to it all. Something at the end."

"And there's nothing now, no purpose in anything, is this what you're saying?"

"You're picking a row, Brenda. It's far too late."

"You're right. Why don't you go on up to bed?"

"Aren't you coming?"

"In a while. Please go on up."

Patrick dragged himself to the door and climbed the stairs.

Brenda looked around the place where she had soldiered since 7 a.m. Twenty hours. She walked thoughtfully over to a mirror they had put strategically for staff to give themselves a quick glance before going into the dining-room. Skin and bone, he had said. Aged twenty years, he had said.

She wrote a short note to Patrick. I'm sorry, but I don't feel like sharing a bed with you tonight. Not if you think I'm old and sad and wretched-looking. Not if you see no hope, no purpose in anything. I'm going to a friend for the night, or what's left of it. But whatever I am, I am a pro. I'll be back tomorrow, 12 noon for the photo call Mary has arranged, and for my lunchtime shift. I don't feel the need to say anything about this to anyone, so you needn't either. Brenda She left it on the table beside where he slept in a deep sleep, arm thrown across to her side of the bed as he had done for years. She took her coat, a change of clothes and some washing things, and let herself out into the early morning of Dublin City.

She took a taxi to Tara Road where Colm ran a restaurant. He was a recovering alcoholic, a man who slept lightly. He too lived over the premises. They had always joked about being rivals, but his restaurant -in its green suburb catered to an entirely different clientele from Quentins" city-centre trade.

She rang the bell and he answered in a wide-awake voice. "Brenda Brennan? The very person."

"Colm, could I have a bed for the night, what's left of it?"

"Sure. Will you have tea and toast or do you want to sleep straight away?"

"Tea and toast will be fine," she said.

He never asked her what it was about and she went to bed half an hour later in Colm's spare room, where she slept until 10 a.m.

"Do I look skin and bone and twenty years older, Colm?" she asked at a breakfast of melon, champagne and orange juice, and a freshly baked pastry.

"No, and only an overtired husband in a blind panic over his restaurant would have said that. Are you going back to him?"

"Of course I am. I'm a professional."

"And you love him?" he pleaded.

"Maybe."

"No, definitely," he said.

"Anyway, Colm, could you get me a taxi, and know you are the truest friend anyone ever had?"

The taxi came in five minutes. Eleven minutes into the journey the taxi was hit by a large truck. It came from the side where Brenda was seated. The blow to her head knocked her unconscious at once. She knew nothing at all after the impact. Brenda had never been late for anything. Patrick began to be seriously worried. She had said she would be back. He knew that she would. He wondered what friend she had gone to see. He wished that he hadn't been so sharp-tempered. Why could he not have given her a hug and said that when the world settled down they would talk? Brenda was never moody. She wouldn't make a scene like this on such a very important day.

When she hadn't turned up for the photo call, he became seriously alarmed. He had tried to reassure everyone else, insisted that Blouse and Mary be included in the pictures as well as the newly recruited staff. He said there were a million last-minute things that each of them had to see to.

They served a lunch short-handed, every moment he expected to see her come in to the kitchen and slip her coat off. But lunch was over, and there was still no sign.

The afternoon didn't bring her, either. He was now getting really worried. By six o"clock he was ready to call the Guards. They were not helpful. A domestic incident at 4 a.m.! They were sympathetic, but they had better things to do with their time. Most missing people came home, they said. Try her friends, they suggested.

He had no idea who to call. He slapped the food on to plates for the dinner with no idea what he was serving.

She would not have left him like this. In hospital, they searched for any identification which would tell them who the dark-haired woman was. All they had was a set of keys and some bank notes in her pockets, a change of clothes in an overnight bag. No hint at all about whom they might contact.

During dinner Patrick went upstairs again. He saw Brenda's handbag on the floor beside the dressing table. She had gone away without anything. It wasn't possible that she had gone away to kill herself. He didn't want to involve Blouse and Mary. Blouse was so simple and innocent. But by eleven o"clock that night he had to tell them.

He was sitting crying in the kitchen and they demanded to know why.

"We'll call the hospitals," Mary said.

They took six of the major places and tried two each.

Blouse found her on his first go.

"Long, straight, dark hair usually tied up in what is called a French pleat," he said, proud of having got it all together.

Patrick wondered if he would have been able to give such a good description. He grabbed the phone. "Is she alive?" he sobbed. "Thank God. Thank God."

She had come round for a moment, spoken in a garbled way of Patrick and Quentin but they had no idea what she meant. They were letting her sleep now.

Blouse got out of the van. Patrick sat inside holding his head. Had he really said to this wonderful, strong, loyal woman that there was no hope, no purpose in anything? Could he have driven her out in to the night because she couldn't bear to lie beside him? The only thing that mattered was Brenda, he knew it somewhere inside. Why could he not have admitted it, and said it to her? Please, please God, may there be years and years ahead when he could tell her.

He sat by her bed all night and stroked her thin, pale cheek. He half-remembered people telling him about the accident and the taxi and the truck. She had been on her way home to him and this had happened.

Then at dawn she woke and he laid his head on her chest and sobbed as if his heart would break.

There was no concussion, very little bruising, just great shock. She had been lucky. The taxi driver had been lucky. Everyone was all right.

I think I'll make it for the party after all," she said.

"You're everything in the world to me, Brenda. You're enough, do you hear what I'm saying? You're more than enough. I love you so much, we have huge hope, a huge future together, you and I." Everyone was there that night at the anniversary party of Quentins, which was as glittery a do as Dublin had seen for a long time, and they would always remember one particular moment.

It was when Patrick Brennan took his wife's hand in his and held it very tight. He looked around the crowd and lowered his voice slightly.

"Brenda and I have a wonderful baby to rejoice over with you tonight. The baby is one year old and we have all of you here to celebrate the fact we have a restaurant which survived a year and where we hope to make friends and strangers alike welcome and happy with us. It's not as wonderful as a real christening with a real baby, but for us it's everything that a real christening is, with a sense of fulfilment and hope and a future ahead of us all. So will you drink to our baby, Quentins, and wish us all well in the adventures that the rest of life will bring to everyone in this room?"

Even hard-bitten media people and professional first nighters were silent as Patrick Brennan kissed his thin, elegant wife Brenda. As the years went on, people said that Brenda Brennan never cried, they must have imagined it. But those who were there knew that they hadn't imagined it. And it wasn't only the Brennans who had cried. Everyone in the room seemed to have been affected, too.

PART II

Chapter Five.

There were so many stories about Quentins, it was hard to sort out which they could use and which to throw away. Setting up a movie seemed to cost a great deal of money. They pored over their budget with anxious faces. Sandy had some money in a savings account which she willingly put into the fund. Nick mortgaged his flat and raised a reasonable sum. But, of course, if they were going to make a film that would win prizes and awards, they would have to have high production values and it would mean asking for serious finance from the King Foundation. They had received their application form and took great care over filling it in.

Til have to work much harder than you two because I have nothing to invest," Ella said. "So today I brought us a bottle of champagne that a customer gave me in Colm's last night. Imagine, he said he didn't want to insult me with money! If he only knew how ready I was to be insulted with money."

They laughed as they got great tumblers and poured it out. They toasted Firefly Films, Quentins, and the King Foundation in New York.

When they had finished the bottle of champagne, Nick had said they must be realistic. They were looking for something that was way out of their league. "It's not Mickey Mouse money this time," he said, frowning.

Sandy tried to make light of it. She hated to see Nick frown. "Don't knock Mickey Mouse. He made a lot of money for Walt Disney in his time," she said.

He grinned feebly. "Sandy, I'm only saying aloud what we're all thinking. Maybe we can come up with another terrific idea. Ella got us this far. All we need is another leap now."

Ella saw the shadow pass over Sandy's face. "I didn't get us very far. It was Sandy who wrote out the whole proposal that won the pitch. And in addition, as soon as this champagne's finished I'm going to have to leave you and look for more paid work with other people. I hate to do it, but you know the scene."

"Are your parents in the shed yet?" Nick asked.

"Yes, we all are, but we actually call it the Annexe, to make ourselves feel better."

"Is it very cramped?" Sandy wanted to know.

"Not too bad, amazingly. Colm knew some builder in the early days, and they do each other favours. Anyway, this fellow built us a grand place with lots of windows in the roof so at least there's plenty of light coming in and there's a whole bank of storage lockups so that my mother can keep things for when we get out of debt again. I even put my things in there."

"And will you? Ever get out of debt?" Nick was blunt.

"I don't know. I wouldn't think so, but it's a start, and my father's calmed down again. For a while I thought he was going to be in a mental home. People know he's doing his utmost to pay them back and that's a help. And two of the flats are already occupied in what we now call the Main House; two more ready by the end of next week. That's not a bad recovery." She forced her voice to sound cheerful.

Sandy and Nick nodded with respect. Compared to what the Bradys were going through, their own problems were small. They would find the money for their project, or they wouldn't - at least they didn't owe real money to anyone.

"What work are you going to do?" Nick asked.

"Deirdre's got me a part-time job up in her lab. I've got two nights a week waitressing in Colm's, two nights a week for Scarlet Feather - you know, your pals Tom and Cathy - weekends in Quentins and, wait for it, two hours a week teaching a pair of twins maths and basic science. They're something else, those two. They keep asking me am I part of the New Poor. I don't know where they heard the expression, but they love it."

"Doesn't sound as if there's much time for a social life," Nick said.

"Oh, Nick, I've had as much social life in the last two years as any girl needs!" she laughed "wryly.

"Was it as long as that?" He seemed disappointed that her affair had gone on for such a time.

"Give or take a bit," she said. "In my case, mainly give, but who's counting?" Afterwards Sandy asked her very confidentially, "Do you think Nick likes me at all, Ella, or am I just wasting my time?"

"Oh, I think he likes you a great deal, Sandy. But I beg of you, don't listen to me, what do I know about men and what they like and don't like? Nothing, that's what I know." Deirdre said that Nuala was coming over next week. "Great, let's get a bottle of wine each and entertain her," Ella said. "But wait, it will have to be after midnight or between four and six Wednesday and Saturday."

"Oh, God, I can't wait till you're back in teaching and have normal hours again."

"I'm not going back," Ella said.

"Of course you are."

"I can't afford to," Ella said simply. "Why don't we say we'll have a picnic in Stephen's Green? Nuala would like that, then I can get back to Quentins at six."

"I'll check it out," Deirdre said. "Bad news, Ella. I'm going to give it to you straight. Nuala doesn't want to meet you in Stephen's Green."

"Okay, where does she suggest?"

"This is the hard bit. She doesn't want to meet you at all."

"I don't believe you."

"It's what the lady says."

"Has she gone soft in the head or something?"

"It's to do with Don. Her husband and his brothers lost a lot of money because of Mr. Richardson. Apparently she's feeling a bit sore about it."

"Well, I'm sure she is, and so are a lot of other innocent people, but why doesn't she want to meet met I haven't got her bloody money." Ella was hurt and angry. "Oh, I don't know, some garbled thing about you having a fine time out in Spanish hotels with Frank's money."

"Isn't she a weak slob? Couldn't I do the same to her, moan and groan and say that it was at her awful in-laws" party that I met Don and ruined my life?"

"Leave it, Ella. She's not worth it."

"But you're still going to meet her?"

"Not if you don't want me to."

"Oh, meet her, for God's sake. What do I care?"

"Ella, come on now!"

"No, I don't care. What does one more small-minded, petty self seeker matter?"

"She used to be our pal."

"She's forgotten that pretty quickly."

Til tell you what she says," Deirdre sighed.

"If you must."

Til take her to Quentins, some time you're not working there."

"Yeah, make sure I'm not working when she's there. I've a neat way with very hot soup straight into someone's lap," said Ella. It was Ella's weekly lunchtime lesson with Simon and Maud. They lived with their grandparents in St Jarlath's Crescent. They were bright enough, but had missed out on some mathematics teaching. They were some kind of cousins of Cathy Scarlet. Ella had learned never to ask for too much detail. But then, she had never met children like Simon and Maud before. They insisted on telling her their whole life story and that they were really related to Cathy's ex-husband, the lawyer Neil Mitchell, but that through a lot of adventures and eventually court orders, they were now living with Cathy's mother and father, Muttie and Lizzie.

They had a dog called Hooves, who had a limp. They had a brother who "was on the run from the police in several countries. They had their own passports, which they had needed because they'd been to Chicago to dance at a christening party. On the plane, they had been allowed up to the flight deck. In Chicago they had . . .

"Sure, but I think we'd better get down to the algebra before I hear any more."

"Are we boring you?" Simon asked very earnestly. "People say we go on a bit."

"No, you're not boring at all," Ella said truthfully. "It's just that I am being paid proper money to teach you, and I don't want to cheat your grandparents or whatever."

"Strictly speaking, they're not our grandparents," Simon began,

"So I brought this book. It's simpler than the one you have at school, but I thought if we went through it first, then when it was all a bit clearer, we could look at your book."

"And can we have real conversation with you when we've understood it?" Maud asked.

"Certainly," Ella said, flattered.

"It's just that we were told not to be asking you questions about your sad life, but we wanted to know all the same," Simon explained.

Ella put her hand up to her face to hide the smile. Til give you blow-by-blow details if you can get your heads round these equations," she promised. "You're not going to spend the whole lunch looking at me as if I'm some kind of criminal?" Nuala said.

Deirdre shrugged. "No, because I'm sure you have some very good reason for behaving like a prize arsehole."

"Deirdre, please, there's no call for that kind of language."

"There's every call. Ella's had enough worries. She was looking forward to seeing you, and you as good as spat in her face."

"But, Dee, she knew what she was doing, going on luxury holidays all on Frank's money and his family's investments. You have no idea the mess that Don Richardson left behind him."

"She spent one long weekend with him, her half-term from school, she bought her own ticket, you fool."

"I heard ..."

"You heard what you wanted to hear, Nuala. I know what went on, including the fact that the man she met at your party lied to her, betrayed her, humiliated her, left her father without a name, house or reputation to call his own. I don't care what you know or think you know. Let's look at the facts: Ella is working sixteen hours a day to make up what the bastard took from her parents . . . and she doesn't even have the comfort of having a picnic lunch with someone she once thought was a friend."

There was a great silence.

"Why did you come then, if this is the way you feel?" Nuala said in a very small voice.

"To tell it to you straight."

"Please tell her I'm very sorry. I didn't think it through."

"No, I'll tell her nothing, you know her phone number. Tell her yourself."

Nuala began to take her phone out of her handbag.

"Not here, it's not allowed," Deirdre said.

Nuala went to the ladies" room. Brenda Brennan asked was everything all right.

"Yes, Mrs. Brennan."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the young lady who got proposed to here in this restaurant?"

"The very one."

"And did it all ... er ... work out ... all right and everything?" Brenda Brennan could sense the tension.

"Yes, I suppose it did, he's a greedy money-mad pig of a man, but he's reasonably faithful to her and she seems content enough. The only problem in paradise is that they were burned badly by Don Richardson, of course."

"They're not alone there."

"No, but she had the nerve to imply that Ella had gained something out of it all."

"Everyone knows that's not the way things were. I thought she and Ella were friends?"

"So did Ella," Deirdre said.

"Well, thank heavens Ella has at least one good friend in you."

"And in you, Mrs. Brennan. She's very grateful to you."

"She's working too hard, that's my only worry. She's white as a sheet. Patrick and I worry about her health, and whether she'll be able to carry on. She's taken on far too much for any one woman."

They saw Nuala coming to the table and Brenda nodded and left to talk to another customer.

"She had her mobile on answer," Nuala said.

"Yes, well, she'll be working, trying to pay back what that bastard stole from her father and his clients. Working while we have lunch here in Quentins."

"Don't make me feel worse, Deirdre. Life isn't actually a bed of roses with me either, you know."

It never is, Nuala," Deirdre sighed. "Come on, let's have the pasta starter and the seared tuna for main course, and you can tell me what Frank's been up to now."

"How on earth did you know he's been up to something?" Nuala was stricken.

"Your face, Nuala. It's written all over it. You have suspicions, isn't that it? You think he's looking at some woman over there in London in a certain way."

"Oh, Dee, you can read minds," Nuala said.

"There's probably nothing in it at all." Deirdre began giving the speech that Nuala wanted to hear. "After a few years, all couples go through this. It's only we, the old maids, who get to hear about it. They don't tell other wives."

"But it's been going on a bit." Nuala was doubtful.

"It could have been going on a bit just in your mind, you know. Frank is like his brothers, charming to everyone. It could be a matter of nothing," Deirdre said.

Nuala's eyes were shining. "That's exactly what Frank says. He says it's all in my mind."

"Well then, there you are," said Deirdre wearily. There was a very positive letter from the King Foundation. The application had been read and had been moved on to a shortlist. There were various other technical details to attend to, and criteria to meet, but in general they had met all the main requirements and they were on to the next level. The letter was signed "Derry and Kimberly King". Nicky and Sandy wished that Ella were there to share it with them, but she "was giving private tuition to these extraordinary twins. They would celebrate with her later. Meanwhile, they held hands and rejoiced at having got so far.

If we do get it made and it goes to festivals and we get known and have plenty of money, what would you do with it?" Sandy asked suddenly.

"What would we do with it, you mean?"

"No, I mean you, actually."

He looked at her, dumbfounded. "We'd get better premises, wouldn't we? New equipment. Take on someone full-time, have a honeymoon of some kind, get a really good, glossy brochure out. Isn't that what you'd do?"

"Yes," she said, her cheeks getting pinker. He had actually said honeymoon.

"You'd do all that too?" Nick teased her.

I would, yes." She didn't look at him.

"But there's one thing, Sandy. We can't have a honeymoon without getting married first."

I know," she said.

"So are you going to ask me to marry you?" he went on.

"Doesn't the man do that?" Poor Sandy was still not sure if he was teasing her or proposing.

"Not always. The better decision-maker usually does it. You"re the better decision-maker in our company."

"And should I wait until we got rich, do you think?" Her anxiety was so obvious now he couldn't bear to let it go on any longer.

"I'd love if we got married, rich or poor," he said.

"Oh, Nick." Her smile was so broad, he picked up a Polaroid camera. "I want to show this to our grandchildren some day, tell them what you looked like the day you proposed."

The phone rang just then. It was Mike Martin, a friend of Don Richardson's in the past, he had put some work their way. Nick was surprised to hear from him.

It's not a job, alas, those are thin on the ground these days with the climate we have now."

"That's for sure," Nick agreed sadly.

"It's more of a personal favour. You know Ella Brady, I believe."

"Yes." Nick was cautious.

"Well, you remember a friend of hers. Someone who no longer lives in this land - who went to Spain?"

"Do you mean Do n Richardson?" Nick asked baldly.

"Yes. Well, I was trying to be more discreet."

I have no need to be discreet. That was his name. This isn't a police state. We can say people's names, surely?"

"No, but the guns are out for him, Nick. You know that."

"The guns may well be out for him, but they are hardly tapping my phone about him." Nick felt very annoyed with this man.

"Did you lose money, Nick? I know for a fact that Don is doing his level best."

"I'm sure he is, his very level best. No, I didn't lose anything, but I have great friends who were ruined."

"And believe me, they will be recompensed, compensated."

"That's not what we read in the papers."

"What do journalists know? And it's actually about that I'm calling. Is this a convenient time?"

"Yes. You interrupted a marriage proposal, but it can be continued when we've finished talking." Nick leaned over and stroked Sandy's face.

I never know whether to take you seriously or not."

"I know, it's a worry." Nick let a silence fall.

"Anyway, our friend hasn't been able to contact Ella."

"I think Don probably knows Ella's phone number."

"It's not as simple as that."

"It probably is, or he could send a letter, a postcard, an email."

"I'm going to cut to the chase, Nick. You're not being as cooperative and understanding about the problem as we'd hoped."

"We?"

"Urn ... Don and I."

"You're with him as you speak?"

"That's neither here nor there. What I was going to do ..."

". .. was cut to the chase. I heard you."

"There's this briefcase with a laptop computer."

Til bet there is."

"Which Mr. Richardson inadvertently left in Ms Brady's apartment ..."

"That must have been a day or two ago."

I beg your pardon?"

"Don Richardson ran out of here four months ago. He must have missed his briefcase before now."

"Now is when he's looking for it, Nick."

"Well, he can come home and pick it up, can't he?"

"He can't find Ella. She's not in that apartment. She's not in the house in Tara Road."

"And I imagine he knows why. They had to sell everything, give up everything, because of him."

I don't think he sees it that way . .."

"You do surprise me!"

I'd like to give you a phone number. Please give it to Ms Brady and ask her to call Mr. Richardson."

I wouldn't hold your breath, Mr. Martin."

"I'll dictate the number, and I'm sure you'll be responsible enough to pass it on."

"I'll take lessons in responsibility from your pal Don, will I?"

"Have you a pen or pencil?"

"Yes, but what's to stop me giving this to the newspapers, the authorities, or some of the people he robbed blind?"

"I'm sure you'll do the right thing, Nick," said Mike Martin, and read out a number. Then they both hung up.

"What was that all about?" Sandy asked, round-eyed.

"About a tactless oaf who interrupted you when you were about to kneel down in front of me ... wait, wait ... and meet me kneeling down in front of you, and we were going to ask each other the most important question of our lives."

"And that guy in Spain?"

"Can wait his turn like everyone else," said Nick, kneeling down on the floor. Barbara and Tim Brady were having a late lunch in the little bit of garden they had kept for themselves beside their Annexe. Through the bamboo hedge they could see the Main House, where they had lived until three months ago. All of it now let at astronomical rents. Oddly, they didn't miss it nearly as much as they had thought they would.

Looking back on it now, they realised it had been too big for them. And lonely, too. Somehow, since they had come here, it was much more companionable, and they saw so much more of Ella as she dashed in and out and grabbed cups of tea. Her friend Deirdre called a lot, which was nice. They still had a great deal of anxiety and the nightmare about the debts they owed and the people in Tim's office who had lost money. But all in all, it was a happier time, a better quality of life. They hardly dared to admit it to anyone except each other. And they were able to talk to each other these days. Which was another change for the better. "It's not too hard, when you put your mind to it," Simon said. "That's what I've always found," Ella agreed. "But of course, there's no real point to it," Maud said.

"I don't know. There's a sort of a point, like it's a principle, a formula. When you know how to do it once, you can always apply it again."

"But when would you ever want to apply it again?" Maud wondered thoughtfully.

Tor exams, I suppose," Simon said. "Do we really need to do that whole page of problems before next week?"

"Yes, you do if I'm to be sure you've understood it and move on to the next thing."

"Nobody else at school has to do a page of problems," Maud said with a slightly downturned mouth.

I know, Maud. Aren't you lucky that they're paying extra for you to learn more?" Ella said.

Maud was debating this when Ella's phone rang. It was Nuala. She was in tears. She was so sorry, she was such a fool, she had quite rightly had the head bitten off her by Deirdre. She'd love to talk to Ella. That is, if Ella would ever forgive her.

"Sure, I'll forgive you," Ella said. "That bastard upsets everyone, makes them behave out of character, that's all."

Maud and Simon exchanged glances.

"But Nuala, I have to go. I'm at work at the moment."

"Dee says you never stop."

Chapter Six.

"No, I'm fine. I'm entering the social phase of work now. Isn't that right, Maud and Simon?" she said to the children.

They looked at her, startled.

"What on earth does that mean?" Nuala asked with a giggle.

"It means that Simon and Maud are going to put away their books, get me a huge mug of tea, and I'm going to tell them all about my very unhappy life," Ella said.

"You sound absolutely unhinged, Ella, but I'm so glad you forgive me. You can behave however you like. I'll call you tonight."

"Not between six and midnight," Ella said cheerfully and hung up her phone.

She had just got to telling the twins the bit of her very unhappy life where she hadn't been chosen for the hockey team.

"It doesn't sound terribly unhappy," Maud complained.

"No real, awful things," Simon added.

"If you wanted to be on the First Eleven, and should have been, then that's pretty terrible," Ella protested.

Her phone rang again. This time it was Nick. She listened and her face got red and then white again. The twins watched her with interest. "The bastard," she said eventually. "The class-A bastard." She took down a number on the back of her notebook. "Thanks, Nick, I'll get back to you on this." Her voice was slightly shaky, but a promise was a promise.

Those children had got their heads around quadratic equations. Now she had to tell them the story of an unhappy life. "So the day of the school's hockey final approached . .." she began.

"Could you tell us about the bastard, please?" Maud asked politely. "It sounds much more interesting." All evening she thought about that slimy Mike Martin, out there in Spain with Don, after telling the television cameras that he couldn't understand the disappearance, the flight, the whole thing. He had told the nation that Don Richardson adored his wife, the lovely Margery Rice. Now he was contacting Ella, the mistress, and looking for a computer.

The only thing this proved was that there was something in the laptop that they didn't want found. Now that was interesting. Very interesting. And also a little frightening. It was only a matter of time before they found where she lived. Someone would tell Mike Martin that they lived in the garden shed on Tara Road. And then surely he would come to collect the computer that belonged to the great Don Richardson, and presumably must contain some of his secrets. Ella had assumed that Don must have deleted every file in it, and that was the reason why his password, "Angel", didn't work.

It was packed with her things in storage at the Annexe in Tara Road. She hadn't thought about it in weeks. She wouldn't think about it now, she was working too hard. And also because she did not want to believe that it had not been left there purposely. And so he would not be coming back for it himself. Ever. "God, Ella, you look dreadful," Nick said when they met down by the Liffey for coffee.

"Thanks, Nick, and I always think you look very handsome, too," she said.

"No, you look as if you've been on a ten-day binge. You've got huge dark circles under your eyes."

"Yes, Nick. Sorry, Nick. Now tell me, is there any good news on the search for investors?"

"There's other news first ... Sandy and I are going to get married," he said sheepishly.

She flung her arms around him. "I'm so pleased. You'll be very happy, both of you."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you're such friends. That's a huge start."

"Weren't you and Don friends?"

"No, as it happened, it didn't seem to matter at the time, but looking back on it, of course that was the huge gap in it all."

"What are you going to do about his bloody computer?"

"I gave it away," she said, looking straight at him.

"No, you didn't, Ella."

"Why should I keep it?"

He looked at her, his head on one side. I know you, for heaven's sake. You didn't give it away. Who would you give it to, for one thing?"

"I don't have it." She looked mutinous.

"You do, Ella. You're talking to me, your friend. I know you have it and you must give it to the Fraud Squad as quick as possible and don't have these goons coming after you. Give it in, be done with it, I beg you." His face was troubled.

"There's nothing in it, anyway."

"So what's the problem then?"

"It's not something you do, informing, sneaking, getting people into trouble."

Nick looked at her in disbelief. "Listen to yourself speak for a moment. What has he done, Ella? Think for a moment. Just because you loved him doesn't make you remotely his sort of person. We're just not the kind of people who do everything under the table and run like rats when it all goes up in flames."

"Okay, Nick, don't go on."

"I have to go on. You seem to have lost your marbles on this one, Ella. You did not give it away. If you had, he wouldn't be looking for it all over the place."

"There's nothing on it."

"There must be some information in there. Why do you think he's set Mike Martin on to you? Saying give us a number to phone. Or else."

"He didn't say "Or else", did he?"

"No, but it was in Martin's tone."

"What do you think I should do, Nick?"

If you won't give it to the police then go away," he said.

"I can't go away. You know that. This isn't the time for a holiday. My head would explode."

It wouldn't be a holiday. It would be work, paid work."

"Where?"

"New York City! We've had more good news. The King Foundation says we've got to the next level. We're on the shortlist."

"Nick, that's great. Why didn't you tell me?"

"There were bigger things to talk about. But this is great, and one of us has to go, so it's perfect timing. Go on, Ella. It would solve everything."

I can't leave all my jobs."

"We've asked round. They'll all let you go. Tom and Cathy, Quentins, Colm's and Deirdre's laboratory. The only parties having any problems with this are Maud and Simon, who have learned whatever it is you asked them to and fear they might have forgotten it when you come back."

"You asked them without telling me .. . you dared to do this on my behalf?" Ella was incensed.

"We had to prove to you that you could go, before we bought the ticket."

"Ticket?" she said.

"Yes, yes. You need a plane ticket to get to New York. Go, Ella."

"Make the call," she said suddenly. Til go out and look at the river."

Til tell him you are away and it will be true," Nick said. Mike Martin answered the phone.

"I went to find her," Nick said slowly.

"And?"

"And she's not here, apparently." "Not here? What does that mean?" "What it says. She's gone away. No one knew where." "Who did you ask?"

"Her various employers. You can check with them." "She'd be wise not to play around with Don." "Oh, I'm sure she knows that now, but at the time she probably thought it was a good idea and that he meant what he said and that sort of thing."

"You're a smart-arse, aren't you, Nick?"

"No, I'm relatively simple, but I was pleased that Ella is away, as it happens, and hope that she's strong enough to face you all when she gets home." He hung up, shaking. Ella came back from the river.

"They believe you've gone, Ella, so now let me brief you properly on Derry King." "On what?"

"A very rich guy indeed. He set up a foundation to help artists and film-makers. More strong black coffee. All the hopes and the entire current assets of Firefly Films are going into this trip." "You can't do this to me, Nick." Ella was alarmed. "We have to. It's our only hope." I'm fragile. You said yourself I look like shit." "You have two and a half days before you meet him. You could paint your face or something." Her parents were pleased with the news. It will get you out in the real world again," her mother said.

"Lord, I don't think staying in a Manhattan hotel and trying to get a man to invest in a tiny Irish company is exactly what you'd call the real world," Ella said.

"It's a change," her father said.

"There's one thing I have to tell you. Otherwise I can't go. You know that man, Mike Martin? He's often on television."

"I know him," her father said.

"Well, he's a friend of Don's, apparently, and Don is looking for a laptop machine he left in my flat. So Mike Martin might just possibly come and ask you about it. Suppose he does come and enquire. Can I ask you to say you have no idea where I am, but you know I took a laptop with me? I hate the lies, more lies, but it's nearly true. I am taking it with me, and you won't know where I am every hour of the day." She looked from one to the other pleadingly.

"That's fine. We'll say it just like that," her mother said.

"You never tell us your movements, that's what we'll say," her father agreed.

"And you won't let them browbeat you or anything?" She was looking at her parents fondly.

"Browbeat . .. what a marvellous word. I wonder what it means." Her father was smiling a less papery smile than he had some months back.

"Let's look it up, Dad." She went for the dictionary. It wasn't all that helpful. It meant to bear down on someone sternly, to bully them.

"We knew that already," he said.

"It's from Old English, "bru"," Ella read.

"A lot of help that is," her mother laughed.

They were much more like a happy family out there in the shed than they had ever been before. Ella called in briefly to the twins in Muttie and Eizzie's house.

"Hallo, Ella. We heard you weren't coming. We were just talking about you." Simon sounded pleased.

"You were?" Ella was apprehensive.

"The man who rang and said you're not coming for two weeks, was that the bastard?"

"No, no it wasn't at all. It was Nick, a very nice man."

"Is he part of your future?"

"No, Simon, he's not, as it happens." Ella had a nearly irresistible urge to say that Nick was part of her distant past, the first man she had slept with, in fact. But not with those two, never wise to let them have any real information at all.

Til tell Maud. She's making fudge in the kitchen."

"Simon, I'll be posting a letter in the mail to you. We were meant to be doing some geometry this week . . ."

"But we don't have to work if you're not here, surely?"

"You don't have to, but wouldn't it be nice if when I got back you had both studied this nice, easy explanation that I've written out for you about circles?"

"Oh, they're too hard. We couldn't understand those at all. One thing was the radius and then they called it the diameter and then they called it the circumference .. . no, that's too hard on our own."

"Not if you read it in the simple way I explain it, it isn't."

"It is, Ella."

"But you're going to do it. And you're going to know acute angles and obtuse angles. Believe me, you are."

Simon had a conference with his sister in the kitchen. "Maud wants to know, do you get paid for this?"

"Yes, your grandparents give me money."

"They're not exactly our grandparents."

"So when this letter arrives .. . you are both to take it seriously too."

"Why can't you send it by e-mail, it would be quicker?" Simon countered.

"I can't do that."

"Don't you have a computer?" He was scornful.

"Yes, I do, actually. But the password is jammed, I can't get into it."

"I could do that in a minute," Simon said. "Do you have it with you in your bag?"

"Yes." Ella wasn't sure.

"Simon is terrific at computers," Maud said reassuringly.

"It's just that it's not mine. It's a friend's. He asked me to open it for him."

"Well then, Simon, help her pull it from the briefcase."

"What do you think the password is?"

"I thought it was "Angel". I saw him type it in," she said. Her heart was thumping. Was she really insane enough to share this with these two children?

"No, it's not Angel." Simon had tried it expertly. "It often is something just like that."

"Cherubs," Maud said. "Feathers? Wings?"

"Don't think so," Ella said.

"Is he in America?" Simon asked.

"No. Why?"

"It could be something like Los Angeles."

She remembered the blue and white tiles on the white walls of the resort of Playa de los Angeles. Playground of the rich, criminal or famous. The hiding place full of billiard rooms and swimming pools. That must be where Don lived. That could be the password. She wrote it down with a trembling hand.

Simon entered it and the screen sprang to life. List after list of initials and numbers, column after column of them.

"It wasn't hard," Simon said loftily.

"No, no indeed." She closed it down. "Thank you both very much. I'll bring you a present from . . ."

"From where?" Maud asked.

"From where she's getting her head stuck together," Simon explained. It was midnight. She would be leaving Dublin at noon the next day. She was sitting drinking coffee in Deirdre's flat. Ella needed her wits about her. Deirdre and Nuala were drinking a great deal of wine and laughing a lot. It was as if there had never been any coldness. But they had agreed not to tell Nuala about New York, just that Ella was heading off somewhere to get her head together.

Ella was trying on Deirdre's clothes. "I think I'll take this red jacket, and the black dress, definitely," she said.

"Yes, I'll be walking to work in my knickers," Deirdre said. "Take the red and black scarf too, while you're at it."

"Imagine going off to wherever you "want to." Nuala sounded envious. "It's years since I've been able to do that."

If the others thought that Nuala's husband Frank was always able to do just that, they didn't say it. She hadn't slept at all by the time she got on the plane. Her only expense at the airport was a fairly heavy duty makeup. And something the assistant recommended, which was an under-eye concealer.

On the plane she studied the brief that Sandy and Nick had prepared for her. There was an entire folder of clippings, photographs and a biography of the man she was going to meet. She looked at the pictures first. Pleasant enough face, square shaped, his hair short, thick and coarse, like a brush with bristles. In most pictures he appeared to be peering, almost squinting, at something, causing very exaggerated smile lines at his eyes. His nose was quite snub, but his chin was strong. It was hard to see if he was tall or small. He dressed formally. He was rarely photographed without collar and tie even at a young filmmakers" gathering, where everyone else was much more casual. Either he had many tuxedos or he got the same one cleaned regularly, since he always looked smart at the many functions where he was captured. There were no pictures of his home surroundings.

She wondered how old he was, and began to check up. He was born forty-three years ago in New York, the son of an Irish father and a Canadian mother. The eldest of three sons, he described himself as self-educated. Yet some of his citations included honorary degrees from universities, so he must have done a good job educating himself. She read how he had worked in many different aspects of the stationery trade and eventually set up a company specialising in office equipment. It had become a market leader, with branches all over the United States. She read many company profiles, trying to analyse its success and its award winning status. Nobody seemed to be able to pinpoint the exact reason it had gone on when so many had fallen by the wayside. Any more than anyone had been able to define Derry King, the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman. He was described as hardworking and easy-going, and said to be determined but not ruthless.

Ella got the feeling that he had been courteous to those who interviewed him, but not greatly forthcoming. He gave no details about what he did for breakfast or how he spent his leisure time. He gave hardly any information about his taste in books, music or theatre, saying apologetically that he had worked so hard in his youth that he had never known the luxury of losing himself in music, drama or literature.

But he did love the visual arts. When he was nine, he had a very inspiring teacher at school who told the children that they could all paint and all find beauty inside and around them if only they looked. This had been a great surprise to the young Derry King. He said that he never claimed to have any artistic talent himself, but it had certainly opened his eyes to the beauty around him, which is why he sponsored so many art competitions among the young in the inner cities.

One of the many jobs he took in order to pay his school fees was that of cleaning and tidying up in a cinema. It meant he saw many movies free. It had left him with a love of the film world all his life. No, he had never been tempted to sink his considerable fortune into a studio or a production company, but had tried instead to encourage young people in various aspects of film making.

When asked about his typical day, Derry King gave no little human glimpses of himself reading the stocks and shares over a plate of fruit or visiting a personal trainer, or any minimal insight into his family life at home. Either he did not know how to manage publicity or else he knew how to manage it very well. Ella wasn't sure.

He emerged as a philanthropic benefactor who gave to charities across the board. Always he was interested in causes that helped young people, and advanced funds to those who had not been given an easy start in life. You had to read very hard between the lines to work out what he was like and so far he sounded quite staid, Ella thought.

But that didn't matter. She was coming to New York, on Nick and Sandy's hard-earned money, to be entertained and fascinated by this guy. It "was her job to make him interested in their project. To sell it as well as she possibly could. There was not a great deal of publicity about his foundation. It was as if he didn't want to be thanked in public for doing good. She could have done with more information.

It was in many ways a bald file. No pictures of him in a penthouse suite or in a Malibu Beach home. On a ranch at weekends. There was mention of a wife, Mrs. Kimberly King, a leggy number, very possibly a trophy wife. In one interview he said they had no children. In another he said that both his parents were now dead. Nowhere did he say anything about his Irish ancestry. Twice in the clippings he mentioned happy childhood vacations in Alberta, Canada.

She looked long and hard at his picture again.

A man of forty-three, the same age as Don Richardson, who had worked hard all his life. She learned little from his picture. But then she had learned little of Don after two years of loving him. This Derry King looked much older than Don. Perhaps his life had been harder. He might not have had all the perks and pleasures that Don had. And, indeed, probably continued to have.

Chapter Seven.

The hotel was a small, inexpensive but chic place off Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, far from the boarding house in Queens where she and Deirdre had stayed that time so many years ago when they had come to New York. It was a place owned by someone's brother who was meant to give them a great deal but there had been a great misunderstanding. He had thought they were coming out to his place to give him the trade, not the other way round looking for a bargain. She had been so young then, Ella thought. Imagine them getting upset by that! If she had known what upset was really like!

Anyway, no point in brooding. She must enjoy the days in the hotel to the full. She had said she didn't really need to spend all this time in New York, but they had insisted. Nick and Sandy had said it was essential that she should be on the spot and available, in case Derry King needed to rethink something through with her. Deirdre had said that it took everyone at least fourteen days to get a head together, especially since Ella's head had been so battered and then tried to cure itself by overwork. Brenda Brennan said that she should make the most of it. New York City in autumn was everyone's dream. She must not think of running back. Her father and mother said she must write down some of the things she saw, they'd love to hear all about it when she came back. She realised that they were all afraid for her. They were afraid of Don Richardson and what he might do when he came back. Ella shared a taxi into town with a small, plump Dublin woman who knew every angle there was in the world. She was a dealer, she said proudly, had travelled over with four empty suitcases. She was going to buy stuff in bargain basements for the next four days, fantastic stuff you didn't see at home at all, slippers with pink fur on them, black underwear with red feathers. She'd sell it all at three times what she paid. She did it every year. She could not understand to save her life why there weren't more people in on it. It was the easiest money she'd ever made, and believe her, she had made money in many different ways.

She asked Ella what line she was in herself.

"I'm trying to raise money to make a film," Ella said.

The woman said her name was Harriet, and that if ever Ella was lonely, give her a ring at her hotel and they'd go out for a few drinks.

Ella tried to cover her amazement that Harriet named a very expensive, five-star hotel. There must be good money in importing exotic lingerie. Or was it smuggling? The lines were getting more and more blurred. If you could afford a hotel like that, why were you bringing over four empty suitcases to buy cheap gear? Why were you sharing a taxi with someone into town? Then again, maybe that kind of economy "was exactly why Harriet could afford the five-star hotel she was staying in. She settled into her own hotel and had a long bath. Deirdre had given her a very expensive oil, "to put you in a good mood". Its scent seemed to seep into every part of her body and all around the room. Ella didn't really believe that these unguents and lotions did any good, but she did feel a lot better. And maybe looked a little less drawn.

Then she called the hotel beauty salon to make an appointment for the next morning. She had promised Nick and Sandy that she would have her hair done before she met Derry King. On behalf of the company they said she had to do this. They didn't want her frightening him away before the negotiations started. And then she found herself wandering around the room, pacing like an animal in a cage. To her amazement, she felt restless and edgy. In need of company, any company. It might be midnight back home, but it was only 7 p.m. here. Outside her windows, a New York evening was just getting under way. If only Deirdre were here. They would have great fun. Or Nick and Sandy, she enjoyed their company. If they were here now, with a bottle of inexpensive wine that Sandy would have found in some liquor shop, they could sit and plan their strategy.

Or anyone else she liked. Brenda Brennan from Quentins, for example. She was surprisingly good fun when you got to know her.

She looked over at the laptop. No, she would keep her promise to herself. Don't look into all it contained until she had dealt with Derry King. There would be plenty of time later. And now at last she knew how to unlock its secrets. She really owed young Simon for that. Deirdre called around to the Bradys for solidarity. "It will do her no end of good, this trip," she said.

"I'm very anxious, Deirdre, our daughter to be running away from someone like as if we were all in gangland! Couldn't she have given the laptop to the Guards and be done with it?"

"She will do that when she comes back, I'm sure of that," Deirdre murmured. "She'll do the right thing. It will just take her a little time." "Deirdre, I've been phoning you all night."

"I was out, Nuala. But now I'm home. What is it?"

"Listen, Frank got a message from Don."

"He never did."

"Yes, late this afternoon. I've been trying to find you."

"And what did he have to say to Frank?"

"Apparently a lot of it was completely wrongly reported."

"Yes, I'm sure."

"No, really, he explained it was all taken out of proportion."

"Is this why you rang me, Nuala?"

"Well, yes and no. You see, Frank was wondering whether Don might contact Ella?"

"Why in the name of God would Frank think that?"

"Well, I said that she went off somewhere today and she didn't tell any of us where she was going."

"So?"

"So Frank thought she might still be carrying a torch for Don."

"Carrying a torch!" Deirdre screamed with laughter. "A torch, no less. What a ludicrous thing to say. Is Frank losing his marbles? If she was carrying a torch anywhere near him, she would gouge his eyes out with it. She hates him, Nuala, you know that."

"Love and hate aren't all that far apart," Nuala said prissily.

"I don't think so in this case, and did Frank get this idea out of the air or did you sow it in his mind?"

"No, I didn't sow it in his mind, but after he was talking to Don, he seemed to think it was a possibility."

"And he's all buddy-buddy with Don now?"

"I told you, there was a misunderstanding. Don has sent a sum of money to a PO box, one of Frank's brothers picked it up."

"So Frank has forgiven him."

"He's listening to him anyway."

"And what does he hear?"

"That Don wants to make it up to Ella. He'd like to know where she is."

"Well, I have no idea. She went to clear her head and I don't want to talk about it any more."

Deirdre sent up a silent prayer of thanks that they had told Nuala nothing. Suppose they had innocently said where Ella was going? One of Don's henchmen could have been waiting for her in the New York hotel this very minute. Nick and Sandy were just going to bed when Deirdre rang. "I know it's silly, but I'm just sitting here on my own worrying. She is all right, isn't she? It's just that Don's getting Frank and his desperate brothers to use Nuala to get to Ella. He even paid them the money they lost."

"Do you think we should tell her?" Nick asked.

"I don't know. Part of me thinks we should, but then it's your pitch. I don't want her to go to pieces on you out there."

"The job's not as important as her being all right. Look, I'll discuss it with Sandy and then we'll give her a call."

"Think about it, Nick. If she's on her own out there, it might be worse for her to know."

"Go to bed, Deirdre. Don Richardson can't ruin every night's sleep in the Western world." They called Ella's hotel, but she was not in her room. Nor was she in the hotel dining-room. "It's one in the morning," Sandy said disapprovingly. "It's only eight p.m. there. We're not her mother and father." "Still, who does she know there? Where can she be?" Ella was at a party in Harriet's suite, drinking cocktails and meeting some of Harriet's contacts. They were mainly women in their fifties, scouts that she had sent out looking for supplies. Some of them were younger and wearing a lot of jewellery and expensive jackets. Harriet had not been at all surprised that she phoned and had welcomed Ella warmly. Everyone was interested for a moment when she was introduced as a movie-maker, but they lost interest when they heard it was a documentary.

Harriet's contacts had brought her samples. Ella examined yellow negligees with rhinestones, scarlet thongs and black panties with pink lace rosebuds on them. Had Ireland changed a great deal? Or did everyone else at home wear underwear like this and Ella was the only one left out?

"You can buy anything you need at cost," Harriet said to her kindly.

"Thanks, Harriet. I don't have much of a sex life going at the moment. I think I'll pass, if you don't mind."

"Fine-looking girl like you, you do surprise me," Harriet said.

Some of the contacts seemed to suggest that owning a proper wardrobe of what was on display was the surefire way of restoring a good sex life fairly speedily.

Ella had eaten nothing and was beginning to feel a little lightheaded. "Well, if I thought they'd help sell my film idea to Derry King," she said, pretending to consider one of the little corsets.

"Not the Derry King!" said one of the contacts.

"You've heard of him?"

"There was a big piece about him in the paper today .. . but what was in it?"

None of them could remember.

I hope he hasn't gone bankrupt," Ella said. That would be all they'd need. But it appeared that it had something to do with rescuing a dog shelter. Derry King had not only given the place the funds it needed, but he had marched with the protesters personally and raised their profile considerably. "A dog lover, I see," Ella noted. It hadn't mentioned that in any of the files. "Then I'll buy that jewelled dog collar for him," she said.

"It's a bit flash, Ella. I mean, it's only five dollars. It's for guys to give their girls who have silly bow-wows." Harriet didn't want to steer her wrong.

"No, what's more, I'll buy two. I know a dog called Hooves back in Dublin who'd absolutely love it."

She had three more cocktails, went back to her own hotel, and fell into sleep without even listening to her voice-mail on the telephone. This was meant to be her day off. Her whole day to relax and get ready for tomorrow to meet the great Derry King, investor and apparently a dog lover. And now she had the most unmerciful hangover. Slowly she got herself into the day. The woman at the beauty salon suggested a facial. It was very expensive, but what the hell? She would pay Firefly Films back one day. That's what she was going to spend the rest of her life doing anyway, it seemed. Paying people back. "Sorry, Nick, I was out last night. I forgot to check my messages," she said when she found the winking light and called him back.

"Great, Ella. You're really on top of things over there," he said.

"No, I'm fine. I have such hair and such skin you just wouldn't believe it."

"Terrific."

"What were you on about anyway?"

He told her briefly about it all, how they were all a little bit worried in case Nuala might just have got any of it right.

"Not very likely, based on previous performance." She was brisk.

"Don't be flip, Ella. We're your friends, okay?"

"Sure, sorry, it's just that I'm a bit frail. Nuala's half-wit take on everything doesn't seem real from here."

"Why are you frail?"

"Hung over. Mixed cocktails."

"Jesus, Sandy, she's been spending our money on cocktails."

"No, they were free. I met this woman on the plane .. ."

I don't want to hear about it... listen, Ella. It could be serious. He's paid off Frank and his brothers simply because he's married to a friend of yours and hopes she knows where you are."

"No, he doesn't want to contact me," she said.

"Why do you say that? Hasn't he got Mike Martin and Frank sending out feelers?"

"If Don really wanted to talk to me, he'd find me."

"And would you talk to him?" Nick asked fearfully. He had a sinking feeling why Ella had kept the laptop. She wanted Don to get in touch with her.

"Probably." She sounded very far away.

"But you can't. Not without someone else being there."

"This is costing you a fortune, Nick. Thanks for being involved, I mean it, and thank Sandy and Dee for me. But I'm fine."

"You're okay, really?"

"Really I am. And I can't wait to meet Derry King. I bought him a jewelled dog collar, by the way."

"I ask myself over and over if we did the right thing, sending you to New York," Nick said. Harriet rang to know had she survived.

"Yes, just about. Sorry for laying into your booze so heavily."

"Not at all. It's just that... I don't know, those dog collars are a bit tacky. You know, if you really do want to impress him that might not be the right way to go."

"Thanks, Harriet. I'm meeting him tomorrow. I'll see how it goes."

"Anyway, who am I, talking to someone like you ... you're well able to look after yourself."

"I wish."

"I recognised you as that money broker's girl, the one they thought he had run off with."

"Oh, you did." Ella's voice was dull. She often wondered if people recognised her. Now that the months had gone by very few remembered her, but of course she had to meet someone who did.

"Only because a mate of mine, a real nice woman, Nora O'Donoghue, she lost her wedding money to him."

I know Nora. She works in the kitchen of Quentins sometimes. She's very nice."

"She lodged with my sister once in Mountainview and she's getting married to this teacher. Apparently he was giving Latin lessons to Richardson's sons ... anyway, they lost their savings . .. that's why I'd remember."

"A lot of people lost their savings, my own parents did," Ella said.

"And no one knows where he is?"

"Well, we think he's in Spain. He must have been setting up a different name and home when I was with him. It all seems so long ago."

"You know, I half-wondered when I saw you if he was out here. New York would be a good place to hide, and maybe you were coming out to meet him. And I said to myself it might be dangerous for you."

Ella felt a sudden shiver of fear. It was probably the hangover, she told herself firmly. But two people within five minutes of each other warning her on the telephone was hard to take.

"No, truly, Harriet. He's long gone out of my life."

"So good luck with the film anyway, and remember what I said. Think carefully about the dog collar."

"Good luck, Harriet, and thanks for everything."

"There'll be other fellows, there always are."

"Oh, I'm sure of it. It's just that I'm not ready for one yet."

"They turn up when you least expect them."

"Did someone turn up for you, Harriet?"

"The nicest fellow that ever wore shoe leather. Married to a right bitch. She pushed him too far one day and he came over to me with a suitcase. That's ten years ago."

"And why isn't he here with you?"

"He's terrified of planes and big cities."

"And what'll he do while you're here?"

"He'll cook grand things like chicken pies and spaghetti sauces and label them and put them in the freezer. And he'll talk to his pigeons, and he'll go and have a pint with his son, and he'll be at the airport in a van to lift me and the bags home."

"Good luck to you," Ella said.

"And to you, Ella, and you know that no one blames you for that bastard. But I'd love it all to come out about your family and everything . .."

"One day," Ella promised as she looked over at the laptop computer on her desk. It was such a lovely day. No blustery wind to blow her new hairdo away, so she went for a long walk down Fifth Avenue.

New York was full of energy. Ella felt a new spring in her step as she walked. She called into St Patrick's Cathedral and longed to have enough faith to pray to God and ask for the meeting with Derry King to go well. But it wouldn't be fair. And it wouldn't work anyway because God knew that she didn't really believe.

So instead she told God that if He still happened to be listening to sinners, and there were no strings attached, she'd like to remind him that thousands of films got made every year and it wouldn't upset anyone if theirs was one of them next year.

She looked at florist displays. She read the menus on windows. She admired the uniforms of doormen. She strolled through the atriums of office blocks. She watched the office workers coming out into the street to smoke or grab sandwiches in a deli. She wondered what it would be like to work in this huge, exciting city where nobody seemed to know anyone like people did in Dublin, where you were always nodding at people and saluting each other.

A tall man passed by and looked at her appreciatively. Ella felt alarmed. Suppose Harriet had been right about New York being a good place to hide. Possibly Don was in this city. She might meet him at the end of this block, at the next traffic lights. But she must not give in to silly fears. This is the way madness and weakness lay.

"You've got to have courage," she said aloud suddenly.

"Right on, lady," said a man at a news-stand who was the only one who had heard her.

Ella hugged herself. She liked New York, she was as safe here as anywhere. She would walk until she was too tired to walk a step further, and then she would take a taxi back to her hotel.

She slept for fourteen hours and got up feeling better than she had felt for ages. I thought you'd be older," Derry King said as he shook hands with her in the foyer of the hotel.

"I thought you'd be older too," Ella said with spirit. "But here we are, babes in a big business world, so can I offer you coffee?"

He smiled.

He had a good smile for a square-built man with a very heavily lined face. She knew to the day how old he was, and yet he didn't look it. Forty-three-year-old New Yorkers wore their years better than most Dubliners of the same age.

Til drink coffee, sure. Do you want us to talk here, or should i we talk in your suite?"

"We are a small outfit, Mr. King. I have a bedroom, not a suite. I think we'd be much happier here."

"And I'd be happier if you called me Derry. I prefer the first name thing."

"Fine, Derry. I brought you a present," she said.

"You did?" He was surprised.

"And is she here at the moment?"

"No, she's gone off ... the way they do at that age."

"Has she gone abroad, do you think?"

Ella's mother was frightened now. This was no courteous man looking for an apartment for a colleague. It was someone looking for Ella.

"Do young people ever tell you where they're going these days?" She laughed nervously.

"Oh, I know, but doesn't she have to work? I think you said she was a teacher."

They hadn't said Ella was a teacher.

"She does a bit of this and a bit of that . .. it's easier to get time off."

"Maybe she went out to the sun, to Greece or Spain?" the man suggested. "Lots of people go out there in September."

Barbara Brady directed her firmest gaze on her husband. "She didn't say anything about going to the Continent to me, did she mention it to you, Tim?"

"Not a word," he said. "Somewhere down in Kerry or West Cork, she said. It could be that she's got herself an extra little job. She ran into a spot of bad luck earlier in the year, and she's desperately trying to gather some money together."

"So anyway, to go back to the flat . .." Barbara began.

But the man had lost interest in the flat in Tara Road. "We're back here for a few days. Will you have lunch with me, Deirdre?"

"No, Nuala, thanks, but I can't."

"You didn't even wait to hear which day," Nuala complained.

"I can't any day. There's a crisis at work. We're all on short lunch hours," Deirdre lied.

"Are you annoyed with me about something, Dee?"

"No, I'm annoyed about having to eat into my lunch break. Why would I be annoyed with you, for God's sake?"

"You seemed pissed off when I asked you "where Ella was. It's just that I have to know. Frank keeps going on at me. He says it's the one thing I might be expected to know and I don't even deliver on that."

"Real charmer Frank turned out to be," Deirdre said unsympathetically. "No, they're frightened. His brothers too, all of them."

"I thought they got their money back in a brown paper bag?"

"That was just a little to show that they could get it back if ..."

"If what?"

"I suppose, if they played ball . .."

"And handed Ella over, is that it?"

"I don't think it's quite like that."

"So it's just as well that neither of us knows where she is, then, isn't it, Nuala?" Deirdre was brisk.

"You know, Dee."

"I wish I did."

"Advise me. Help me, please." Nuala was desperate.

"I don't suppose it's the kind of thing you'd get the Guards in on," Deirdre said.

"Not really. Frank and his brothers always steer clear of police and lawyers," said Nuala. Patrick and Brenda Brennan were going to bed. It had been a long, busy night. "I ask myself, do we need this documentary? Every table was full tonight," Patrick said.

"I know, I've thought that too. We'd have to consider expanding." Brenda was frowning.

"Which would change it all." Patrick frowned too.

"Still, it's not meant to be just an advertisement," Brenda cheered up. "It's more like a history of Dublin, isn't it, as seen through the changes in one place."

"Now you're beginning to sound just like young Ella Brady," he said, yawning.

"I wonder how she's getting on out there," Brenda said as she sat at her dressing table and took off her makeup.

She couldn't hear what Patrick said, since he was under the duvet and mumbling into the pillow.

"I do hope she's all right. She's been through a really terrible summer," Brenda said to herself as she creamed away the last traces of the stylish makeup that always took ten years off her age. Derry King was right. They did get on well together. Ella told him no lies, and exaggerated no aspect of Firefly Films.

"What's in it for me?" he had asked early on, and she had tried to tell him as truthfully as she could. He would be part of something fresh and new, made with high production values, which could well win prizes at film festivals, that would be shown on television in many lands.

"How is it new and fresh?" he wanted to know.

"It's not going to be full of shamrockery," she said and he had laughed.

"What's that?"

"Oh, you know, the how-are-things-in-Gloccamora, top-of-the morning approach. There's nobody doing leprechaun duty on this movie."

He was interested. "Warts and all, then?"

"Well, yes ... we'd want to make fun of everything pretentious," she said.

"Give me an example."

"Patrick's very funny about the way Irish people often pretend they know things when they don't, like they don't want to look foolish. He says that you should never drink the second cheapest wine on the menu. It could be any kind of old rubbish, because it's the one people go for so they don't look cheap or shabby by buying the very cheapest on the list."

Derry was smiling at her. "And he'll say all this?"

"Certainly."

"Not afraid of losing his clientele?"

"No, he'll walk a fine line. You'll like him when you come over. I'm actually amazed you were never in Quentins when you were in Ireland before," Ella said.

"I was never in Ireland," Derry said flatly.

"I'm sorry?"

"I was never there," he said, and though his smile did not leave his face, his eyes looked hard. "And I never intend to go." Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather had only lost a small sum when Rice and Richardson had gone to the wall. Compared to others, they had been very lucky. Only an outstanding bill for 700 euros: One catered function unpaid for.

It was the one afternoon a week when Maud and Simon were in to polish what were called Tom and Cathy's "treasures", and to discuss in detail the forthcoming baby. What would it be called? Where would it live? Would it be grown up when Tom and Cathy finally got around to getting married? Could they teach the baby to do step-dancing?

It was almost a relief when the bell rang in the front office and they could escape the children's questions for a few minutes. It was someone enquiring about brochures and price lists. He was a well-dressed man who didn't seem to have any precise idea about what he wanted. There was something about the vagueness of his request that made them suspicious.

"I believe you know Ella Brady," he said, out of the blue.

"Yes," Tom said, giving nothing away.

"Slightly," said Cathy, making sure that she was even more distant. They knew where Ella was, but that it had to be kept a secret.

"Would you have any idea where she is now?" he asked politely.

"None at all, I'm afraid," Tom said.

"Not a clue," Cathy said.

"Now, that's a pity .. . I've been asked to give you some money for a debt that was overlooked. Inadvertently, of course. Around seven hundred euros, I think."

Tom and Cathy looked at each other, astounded. "You're from Rice and Richardson?" Cathy said, stunned.

"No, alas, I'm not, but let's say I'm a friend of one of the people involved, and he felt bad that there had been this misunderstanding and shortfall."

"I'm sure he did," Cathy said.

The man opened his wallet. "He asked me to get it to you personally. He's not a man who likes to leave bills unpaid." The man paused as he laid the seven notes on the small table. "And he'd be very grateful if you could ask Ella to call him at this number."

"Well, this is great to get the money," Tom said. "But we don't have any idea where Ella is."

"So if one depends on the other," Cathy began, "then we shouldn't take the money."

"No, keep it. It might remind you of where she is."

"We know where she is," came a clear voice. Tom and Cathy looked in horror at Maud.

Was there a possibility that Ella might have been so foolish as to mention anything to those children?

"Go back to the kitchen, Maud, please," Cathy begged.

"You don't know anything about Ella's whereabouts," Tom said.

Simon was stung by the unfairness of this. "We do know," he said mutinously.

"And where is that, exactly?" the man was interested.

"She's gone to hospital," Simon said triumphantly.

"She's having a piece of her head put back on," Maud added. "It will take two weeks, altogether."

The man looked at Tom and Cathy as if for confirmation. They both shrugged.

"Could be, I suppose," Cathy said.

"Quite possible," Tom agreed.

The man turned and left without saying a word. As he went down the cobbled lane they saw him pause and take out his mobile phone.

I guess he's calling Spain," Cathy said.

Ts that where the hospital is?" Simon said. I thought it might be in America, from something Ella said."

Tom let his breath out slowly. "And why didn't you share that view with the gentleman when he was here?"

I wasn't sure. It's just she said something about spending her last dollar on something but it could have been just an expression."

"It could," Cathy said, holding Tom's hand in relief.

"Will you be mating again when the baby is born?" Maud asked.

"Probably. If we have the energy," Cathy said.

"Does it take a lot of energy?" Simon was interested.

"Back to the kitchen, everybody," Tom suggested. From the corner of the road, the man phoned Don Richardson. I'm not having much luck, Don. Nothing from the filmmakers, her parents, that restaurant; and nothing from the caterers."

He listened for a while and then nodded. "All right. Plan C then, as you say." Ella looked at Derry King open-mouthed. "You're never going to Ireland!" she said, astonished.

"Not if I can help it, no."

"Then what are you doing, talking about making a movie there?"

I'm not making it, you are." He spread out his hands to show how simple his argument was.

"But what have we been talking about if you don't ... if you never intend .. . I'm sorry, Derry. I don't understand." She looked hurt and annoyed.

I don't have to love Ireland to invest in a movie about it. Anyway, from what I see it's not a hymn of praise to the place . . . it's showing up all its weaknesses, all this new money, greed, so called style."

"We didn't say that .. ."

"Well, that's what it came over like, people imitating Europeans."

"But we are Europeans!" Ella cried.

"No, you said it was warts and all ... just a minute ago."

"Derry, there's something very wrong here." She looked down at her notes. "I've been talking to you in this coffee shop for hours and I must have been giving you completely the wrong message."

"I have, for personal reasons of my own, no love for Ireland," he said. "The legacy of my father is not one that would make me go and look for my roots. I was interested in this project because I thought you were sending them up."

"But you have the initial notes from Nick."

"He said it would be frank and groundbreaking. That's why I'm here ... to learn how."

"And what have you learned so far?" Ella felt a cold lump of disappointment in her chest.

"I've learned that we have stayed too long in this coffee shop. We should have a break now, then I'll send a car for you and take you to a meal. All this talk about food has made me hungry."

She was afraid to let him out of her sight. "They have a restaurant here ..." she began.

"No, they don't, not a real restaurant. Car will be here for you at seven. Okay?"

"One thing before you go."

"Sure, fire away."

Til be talking to Nick. Will I say it was all a misunderstanding, the whole thing?"

"Why would you say that?"

"From what you said, I thought that it had been."

"Hey, we're only into talks about talks so far. The real talks are way down the road."

"But I couldn't betray this restaurant, none of us could. I mean, we'd have to cancel the project if that's what you wanted."

I understand, and I respect you. Seven p.m." It was an awkward telephone conversation. "I'm not getting the whole picture," Nick said.

"Neither am I, to be honest. Could I leave it that we're in talks about talks?"

"Not really, Ella. We've invested all we can in this; we're both in a bit of a panic."

"That makes three of us, or possibly four. Derry could be in a bit of a panic as well. It turns out that he hated his father and he hates Ireland."

"I don't believe you."

"That's what he told me. Will I ring you when I get back? It will be about three or four a.m. your time."

"Don't bother, Ella. Leave it till tomorrow." Ella wore Deirdre's black dress and red jacket. She had taken a large handbag, which was big enough to hold papers and photographs without looking like a briefcase. A chauffeur collected her.

"What restaurant are we going to?" Ella asked chattily.

The chauffeur pronounced the name of the place with awe, and as if it were the only possible place to go if you were the guest of Mr. King.

He was waiting at the table. He wore a dinner jacket. In a way he looked quite as formal as he did in the photographs in those clippings she had read so carefully on the flight over to New York. Yet those interviews and articles told very little about him. They gave no hint of his enthusiasm and willingness to work at something until it "was achieved. They didn't speak of how his face lit up when he thought they were getting somewhere. He was a very keen businessman, out of her league.

Suddenly Ella felt a wave of inadequacy. "I hope I'm dressed enough," she said.

"You look very nice," he said.

"Your wife was not able to join us tonight?"

"Not for many nights," he smiled.

"Sorry, that's another thing I got wrong," she apologised.

"No, you looked up your files perfectly correctly. You just didn't get to the bit where it says "Marriage Dissolved"."

"Was that a long time ago?" Ella tried to be as cool as he "was being.

"Oh, ten years, I'd say, but it's hard to remember because we meet every week at the foundation, you see."

"Does that work? Well, obviously it does because otherwise you wouldn't both be able to do it."

It does work, remarkably well as it happens, and Kimberly is remarried and goes out a lot at night. I don't, so we rarely meet in the evenings. But we met this afternoon. She was most interested in the project, and she will join us tomorrow."

"There will be a tomorrow, then?" Ella was almost tearful in her gratitude.

"Of course there will, Ella. Now look at this menu and tell me. Do your pals in Quentins match up to this place?"

"I wish they could see me now. I wish everyone could see me now." She looked confident and happy for the first time since she had come to New York. Kimberly looked as if she were twenty-two, but Ella knew she must be almost forty. With a perfect, glossy hairstyle that had to be freshly done at a salon every day, a perfect smile with even white teeth, a pale, peach-coloured designer outfit and high black heels, she was dazzling. She was also as smart as anyone Ella had ever met. She was totally on top of the project, and realised what Firefly Films was trying to do. She told them of other movies they had underwritten, one about a young songwriter who had believed so mightily in her own career that she overcame all the rejections and obstacles en route. Another was about a woman who arranged a social club for mentally handicapped children to give their parents a break, but was closed down by the authorities because she did not have the necessary official qualifications. There was another about the stress of being police wives, and another about a woman who had kept a cat for thirteen years in a No Pets Allowed condominium without anyone finding out.

Ella couldn't find any common thread amongst them. Derry and Kimberly seemed pleased. They didn't want to be predictable. Tomorrow they would get down to the nitty-gritty, Kimberly said, and plan out a tour for Derry to make when he got to Ireland. Ella looked up, startled. "But I didn't think you were going to Ireland, Derry?"

"Of course he is. That's only nonsense," Kimberly said.

"No way, Kim, forget it." Derry smiled lazily.

"Would you come instead, Kimberly?" Ella pleaded.

"Yes, Kim, you'd love it." He was teasing her.

"Derry knows I am not going to stir from New York and leave my very young and suggestible husband to all the temptations of this city."

"Oh, Lorenzo wouldn't stray," Derry said. "Not in a million years."

"His name is Larry, Ella, which Derry very well knows, and he is not being left alone to test out any theory."

Ella looked back at Derry. He didn't seem at all annoyed.

"It will all be sorted out eventually. Kim likes to play games. Always her little weakness." He spoke without malice, affectionately in fact.

"Lord, someone has to play games around this place," she laughed, ruffling his hair.

"Now less of this wasting time doing a re-run of an old argument."

"Derry has to go to Ireland sooner or later. He "will leave when he's ready. Why don't you tell us your stories, Ella? Tell us all about these people who will make up the movie."

It was time now, time to convince them that this restaurant was filled with people's lives. She took out her notes and began to tell the stories.

The Short Fuse Martin went back to sleep after he had switched off his alarm. He dreamed a troubled, complicated dream about having the wrong change and being refused service. He woke shaking with irritation about it all and became even more annoyed when he realised it was seven o"clock and that he "would now be twenty minutes late for work. Today of all days. He tried to hurry and naturally that made him slower than ever. He got into a shower that was too hot and had to leap out again, knocking down the contents of a shelf. He lost a button off his best shirt, spilled the orange juice in the fridge. He remembered that he had intended to drop clothes off at the dry cleaners, now there would be no time. This meant that he would not have a freshly cleaned suit for tomorrow. It was the day to put out the rubbish and he had literally no time. He ran out and realised it was raining, went back for an umbrella, and heard the phone ring. Before eight o"clock in the morning, it must be urgent. He answered it and discovered to his great irritation that it was his son.

"Hi, Dad, it's Jody. Just wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten."

Why did the boy think that he might have forgotten a lunch arrangement made over a month ago?

"It's just that you're always so very busy. It could have slipped your mind."

"No, Joseph, believe me, busy people don't forget things like longstanding arrangements. I'm afraid that the luxury of forgetting is only for those who are not busy, don't have anything important to do. Those who have nothing important in their lives."

Why did he do it? Anger the boy further, widen the gulf between them still more. Delay himself still further. And now Joseph was twittering on about the menu, saying his father must choose whatever he wanted to eat. "Yes, yes, I think that's what one usually does in restaurants," Martin snapped.

But Jody heard no coolness in his father's tone. "I just wanted to make sure you knew you didn't have to keep to the fixed menu or anything," he tried to explain.

"Joseph, I have to go." Martin hung up. Outside in the wet street, everyone else had managed to put out rubbish. Other people had got up in time and gone to their dreary little jobs and yet he, Martin, hadn't managed it. Martin, who ran the biggest advertising agency in the city, a man known all over the country. Today they were making a pitch for the biggest corporate client ever. Something they had been preparing for three months and now that the day was here, he had to have this tedious anxiety dream and go back to sleep. There were other things that had to be done today too. Kit Morris, his secretary, must be smartened up. She was too old for the job, her face didn't fit and she wasn't up to speed on all the new technology. Perhaps he should put off talking to her until much later in the day. The thing about Kit was that she never watched the clock, she worked very hard. She had been with him a long time. Probably had no other life outside.

On any day of the week it wasn't going to be easy telling her that she didn't give the image he wanted by appearing in a shapeless skirt and long cardigan. But today was a tense day and it wasn't going to be an early night, either. They were having a reception for their American partners at 5 p.m. with dinner to follow. The timing could not have been worse. If they didn't get the new corporate account, they would not feel at all like entertaining the Americans. Martin sighed as he hastened along the slippery pavement. This of all days to have to meet Joseph for lunch. But the boy had been adamant. It was the anniversary of Rose's death. His wife had been dead for fifteen years. Martin had thrown himself into work since it happened. But tragedies affect people in different ways. Joseph had dropped out of school only weeks after the funeral. It had been impossible to talk to the boy about anything since then.

Martin arrived wet, out of breath and bad-tempered at his office. "They're waiting for you," Kit said cheerfully.

"Please, Kit, don't come at me with profound wisdom. Not today."

Kit was not at all put out. "It's all right, Martin. I've given them coffee and your apologies. I told them you'd had a power breakfast you couldn't cancel. Actually it might work to your advantage." She smiled at him reassuringly.

Martin squared his shoulders and began his morning.

He wasn't to know it, but other people's mornings were difficult too. His son Jody had paced and paced around a small bed-sitting-room rehearsing over and over the speech he would make at lunchtime in Quentins Restaurant. Would it come out as he intended it to? The more often he said it, the less likely it seemed.

In the restaurant, under the watchful eye of Brenda Brennan, the Breton waiter Yan was polishing the cutlery on each table with a soft cloth and having a bad morning. There had been a letter from home with vague mentions of his father going to Concarneau to have tests in the hospital. Nobody said what the tests were for. Should he go home and find out? It would be useless to telephone, they would only tell him not to waste his hard-earned money.

Kit Morris was not having a good day either. It didn't help that Martin was behaving like a spoiled child. She had her own problems. Like how the future was going to work out for her elderly mother. She was no longer able to cope on her own. It would be coming to live with Kit or going in to a home. There were no other options, her married brothers had made that clear. Kit needed some time to think it through. She had been going to ask Martin for a few days" leave. But today was not the day to ask him.

Martin sat at his table in Quentins, drumming his fingers. One of his colleagues had driven him there. The man had patronisingly urged Martin to have a good relaxed lunch, noting that he was on a fairly short fuse today. So now he was fifteen minutes early and of course that boy would be late as he always was. Martin went over the meeting in his mind. The people had been very cagey, they had not said yes or no to the pitch that had been made. They would let him know later in the day. Most things had gone well. What he needed was a good stiff drink. The waiter, foreign of course, didn't manage to catch his eye. The boy did look over once, but his eyes were vacant, so Martin clicked his fingers to attract his attention. Something happened to the boy's face then. A veneer of coldness came over it. It was so deliberate that Martin could not believe his eyes. The young pup was not even going to acknowledge him. This was not good enough, it simply was not. This was a top-class restaurant with standards. He clicked his fingers again and the boy's face was like stone. Martin felt a nerve beginning to tic in his forehead. He stood up and was just about to approach Brenda Brennan to complain in the most forceful of tones when there was a sudden power cut. Every light in the place went out. In a dark, heavily curtained restaurant on a wet, overcast day, it was astonishing the effect it caused. The place seemed to be in complete darkness. For a moment, Martin thought that he had been having a blackout and was greatly relieved to hear fellow diners gasp, laugh and make remarks about the incident.

Holding the table for support, he eased himself back into his seat. Brenda had organised her troops with candles on every table within minutes. She moved amongst them all, assuring everyone that they cooked by gas as well as electricity. So there would be no problem and she insisted that everyone have a drink on the house by way of an apology.

"That's if you can get anyone who will serve you one," Martin grumbled.

I beg your pardon, sir?" Brenda Brennan was startled.

"Well, that Latin Lover over there seems to have been stricken with deafness and blindness even at a time when the lights were on," Martin said.

"Yan is one of our best waiters, so you do surprise me, but let me please serve you, sir. What would you like?"

He saw her speaking to Yan while the boy tried to explain something. He was being very definite about whatever it was he was saying. Martin couldn't hear, but he saw Brenda seem to console him and place her hand on his arm. And then she was back with exemplary speed with his vodka and he tried to relax. Eventually the waiter approached to leave him the menus. Martin had not yet succeeded in relaxing.

"Oh, I see you've noticed me at last," he said.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said.

"Don't even try to tell me that you didn't see me," Martin began.

"No, sir, I did see you. I am sorry for not coming over."

"And why didn't you?"

"You made this sound with your fingers." Yan did that click.

"Yes, because I wanted to get you to see me." "I trained with a maitre d"hotel who said we must develop a diplomatic blindness if such a thing happened, and not to serve the person. Ever. But Mrs. Brennan, she has just explained this is not the policy here, so I apologise."

"Things like that might work in France . . ." Martin began.

"I am from Brittany, sir," Yan said. His face looked pale and anxious. Possibly Brenda had threatened to sack him. The boy did not look well.

"Are you all right?" Martin asked unexpectedly.

"Thank you for asking me. Just I'm a little worried in case my father might be ill and if I should be beside him."

"Are you close to your father?" Martin asked.

"No, he is far away in Brittany," Yan explained.

"I meant, can you talk to him, do you like each other?"

"No father can really talk to his son, no son can really talk to his father, only the very lucky ones. But I care very much, yes."

At that moment, Martin saw his own son being shown to the table. The familiar surge of annoyance filled him. Joseph ... or Jody as he insisted on calling himself . .. wore a torn anorak and grey faded sweater underneath. He looked so shabby, so out of place, yet his smile was confident and happy.

"Dad, I'm so sorry I'm late. The buses were full because of the rain, and I was so anxious to get here because . . ."

"It's all right, Joseph. Give the waiter your order for a drink. It's free because the electricity has failed."

"Has it?" Jody looked around in amazement. He said, I didn't even notice."

Martin looked very impatient. The boy was showing himself to be almost an imbecile.

"Please, Joseph, get some grip on reality," he began.

"But Dad, I was so excited coming to see you to tell you the great news, great, great news."

"You've got a job?" his father asked.

"I've always had a job, Dad," Jody said.

If you call sweeping up leaves a job."

"It's gardening, Dad, but that's not the point. The point is that . .." Jody stopped, hardly able to speak for the magnitude of what he was going to say. "The point is, Dad, I spent two whole mornings wondering how to tell you and now I wonder why, why was I rehearsing it?"

"Rehearsing what?"

"I saw you, Dad, as I came across the room, talking to the waiter.. ."

Jody indicated Yan, who had not left but was looking from one to the other as if he were at a tennis match. "And you looked so kind and concerned, like an ordinary person not a great businessman ... so I said to myself, why do I have to wait until it's a good time to tell you? We are going to have a baby, Jenny and I... we are so excited, I can't tell you how pleased and happy we are. Imagine, a son or daughter of our own. A new person!"

The hint of tears was in his eyes, the eagerness that had never died. The optimism that even his father's cool dismissive attitude had never managed to quench shone out of him.

At that very moment Brenda came over with an envelope for Martin. "Your secretary delivered it by hand. She said she knew you "would not like to be disturbed by the telephone."

Kit had chosen this moment of all moments to bother him with some office business. He barely looked at it but tried instead to think of a response to his son. Before Martin could speak, Yan had taken Jody's hand. "Mes felicitations ... I mean, my congratulations, what a wonderful piece of news. You must be happy, you and your wife."

"Jenny and I aren't married . .. we never saw the need . .." Jody began.

"No, no ... in French it is the same word, wife and woman."

"So it is," Jody said, but his eyes were on his father. "Do you want to open your message from the office, Dad? It might be important," he said humbly.

Martin was almost too choked to speak. "Nothing is as important as this," he stammered eventually. "I'm so very pleased for you both, and for me, and maybe . . . maybe . . ." his voice broke, ". .. maybe there's even a way your mother might know."

"Of course she does," Jody beamed.

Yan stood back as if he expected the two men to stand up and embrace ... and with one movement they did. Something they had never done before. Almost embarrassed, they sat down and looked at each other.

"Now, please, Dad, open the message. It's making me nervous," Jody said.

Kit had written to say that they had got the corporate contract and she had taken the liberty of ordering champagne to celebrate with the American partners. "Everyone is so pleased, Martin," Kit wrote. "You've made this place much more like a family than a workplace. Well done from all of us."

Martin felt almost weak as he read these words.

What had he been thinking of to want to change Kit?

She was utterly essential to the office the way she was.

Thank God he had said nothing to her, it would have been unforgivable.

Jody talked on about names and plans and how he would look after the baby as much as Jenny would.

"I wish I had done that with you," Martin said slowly.

"I asked Mother about that, but she said you had far too short a fuse for minding a child," said Jody, who didn't seem to have an ounce of resentment in his body.

"When I say goodbye to the people in the boardroom this evening, can I come around to you and Jenny to celebrate?"

Jody looked at him in amazement. His father had never been to his flat. Perhaps the short fuse wasn't as important for grandfathers. When Maggie Nolan did so well in her Leaving Certificate, her father said it was something that called for a Serious Celebration. The Nolan family were going out to have dinner in a hotel.

This had never happened before. They had never even been in an ordinary restaurant, let alone a hotel restaurant. Other people went to the Chinese or the Italian - the country was becoming cosmopolitan. Well, some of it was.

But not the Nolans.

There was never the money to spare. There was so much to pay for and so many calls on their time. Mrs. Nolan's mam lived with them, for one thing, and Mr. Nolan's dad had to have his dinner cooked for him and taken over to his flat every day.

Mr. Nolan worked in charge of the bacon counter at one of those old-fashioned grocery stores that people said were on the way out. He was very happy and well-respected there but, of course, if the store really were on the way out, it would be hard for Mr. Nolan to get another job.

Mrs. Nolan worked as a cleaner in the hospital. She was very popular with the nurses and with the patients, but the hours were long and tiring, her veins were bad, and she hoped she would be able to continue working until all the children had been accounted for.

Maggie was the eldest of five. The others were all boys who wanted to play for English soccer teams. They had no interest in their studies and were utterly amazed that their big sister had got enough marks in exams to make people talk seriously about her going to university. They were even more amazed that their father was going to take them to the big posh hotel where nobody they knew had even been inside the door.

But he kept saying Maggie's marks would mean nothing unless there was a Serious Celebration.

"Will it be just the three of you - Mam, Dad and Maggie?" they wanted to know.

"A family celebration," he insisted.

"Will Grandma come?" they asked.

Grandma Kelly was inclined to take her teeth out in public. The money would not extend to Grandma, it was explained firmly. Grandpa Nolan said that he wouldn't cross the door of such a place on principle. He said this before anyone had invited him, without explaining what the exact principle was.

But that still meant seven people going to a preposterously expensive hotel.

"We can't do it - it's ludicrous, Mam," Maggie said. Her mother looked tired after a long day pushing a heavy, awkward cleaning trolley around the wards.

"Listen, child, we are so proud of you, and what has your father been in there slicing bacon for, year after year, if he can't take his family to a posh place when the eldest turns out to be a genius?" Maggie's mother's eyes were bright as they shone in her weary face.

So this stopped the discussion. There could be no more protesting.

Maggie went to her room.

She was eighteen. She knew that the celebration dinner would cost a fortune, maybe two weeks of her father's wages. He would have to borrow from the Credit Union at work. Maggie would have much preferred them to have had chicken and chips and for her father to have given her fifty pounds towards books for university.

But she listened to her mother. This Serious Celebration at the best restaurant in Dublin would give some meaning to a lot of lives. Not only her father's - her mother, too, would like to walk around the ward mentioning casually what "was on the menu at the dinner party last night.

Her two difficult grandparents would rejoice as much as if they had been there. Her four younger brothers would think it was a great adventure. And if they could perhaps be persuaded not to peel the potatoes with their nails ...

Mr. Nolan made the reservation.

"Did they need a deposit?" Maggie's mother wondered.

"Indeed they did not. They asked for a phone number and I gave them the bacon counter extension," he said proudly.

The boys became very annoyed about the amount of washing and scrubbing and clean shirts involved in it all. Maggie's mother said that she had told the matron where she was going and the matron had kindly lent her a stole. Maggie's father had told the general manager where he was going and the general manager had insisted that he would phone ahead and offer them a cocktail before dinner with his compliments.

And eventually the evening arrived.

Maggie had not thought a great deal about it because there was so much else to think of, like the fees for university and how to fit in her studies with all the hours that she would have to work earning the money. The night out in the posh restaurant, the Serious Celebration, was only one more crisis along the line. Since the Nolans didn't have a car they took two buses to get there. Mr. Nolan had the money in an envelope in his inside pocket. He patted it proudly half a dozen times on the journey. Maggie felt an urge to cry every time she saw this but she kept cheerful and said over and over that she couldn't believe they were all going to this restaurant. Her friends would be so envious, she said over and over. And she was rewarded by her mother hitching her borrowed stole higher, and her father saying that the general manager was altogether too good to arrange the cocktails.

They arrived at the door and the place seemed enormous and intimidating, nobody wanted to be the first up the steps.

They felt nervous and out of place once in the restaurant. Mr. Nolan wondered, should they have the cocktails in the lounge or at the table? Maggie, who thought that the boys might do less damage if corralled into just one destination, was in favour of the dining-room, but her mother thought that Mr. Nolan might like to see the lounge as well.

There was endless confusion when Mr. Nolan mentioned the general manager's name. There had been no message about cocktails. Apparently nobody had phoned ahead with any such order.

"Just as well, Da, we'd have all been on our ear if we had them," Maggie said, and tried not to watch the waiter wince as he overheard her remark.

They decided to study the menu and bypass the cocktails.

The menu was in French.

"Can you translate it for us, please?" Maggie said to the scornful waiter.

She was maddened "with grief that the Serious Celebration was somehow going to be dimmed.

The waiter translated, under duress; Maggie remembered what everything was. She decided that her father was going to have the steak, her mother the chicken, and that she and the boys would have well-done lamb chops. Nobody would have any starters, she said, but they would all have dessert, she promised the sneering waiter.

The boys were so shocked and overawed by it all that for once in their wild lives they agreed with her.

She had never felt so angry and upset in her whole life. The look on her parents" faces was like a knife sticking into her. They were embarrassed and ashamed - after all their borrowing and planning it had not been a good idea.

"This is something I will always remember, Mam, Dad," Maggie said truthfully. She would remember it every day of her life, when she was a high-flying lawyer, when she was confident enough to know every dish on the menu and to be known with admiration by every one of the hotel staff here.

"Maybe it wasn't quite . . ." Dad began.

Maggie felt faint, quite literally, as if she were going to fall over. He had wanted so much for this outing to be a success for her. The more she protested, the worse it was going to get, and the more pathetic she would make him seem.

A waitress "was setting up the table with the appropriate cutlery. An elegant, groomed woman, aged around thirty, she wore a white lace collar and she was probably as horrible, snobbish and dismissive as the rest of them. Maggie burned with rage at it all.

But this woman somehow managed to catch her eye with a look of understanding. This woman seemed to know it was a special occasion.

"My name is Brenda Brennan, and I'll be serving at your table. Might I enquire if this is a special family celebration?" she asked.

"My eldest - you wouldn't believe, Miss, the marks she got." Poor Da was bursting with eagerness to tell someone, anyone, what it was all about.

"Well, I'll tell this to Chef. He just loves to hear that we have academic people in. Usually it's only people on expense accounts," the woman called Brenda said.

Maggie wanted to get up and hug her. But she knew that she must not do that - there was a role to be played.

"Thank you so much. When you're qualified and on your way, Chef Patrick and I will have our own restaurant," the woman called Brenda said.

Maggie's father's face was glowing red with pleasure.

"You will leave us your name, won't you, sir, so that we can keep you on our lists?" she asked.

The scornful waiter was surprised when Patrick, the tall, dark and moody chef, said he was doing a special dessert, free, for everyone in the Nolan party.

He piped the name "Maggie" on it in chocolate and asked for it to be brought out and photographed. He posed beside it, wearing his chef's hat, with his arms around the family.

The supercilious waiter sniffed. Imagine making a fuss of riffraff like these people ...

The Nolans went home on the bus with half the cake. It had been a seriously good celebration.

Maggie looked out of her window that night and thought of the length of time it would take her father to pay it all back. By the time she was a qualified lawyer and received her Parchment as a solicitor, four years had passed. And a lot of things had happened.

Her father's company had sold out, as had been predicted, but he had been taken on by the new buyers and he wore a straw hat and striped apron at the bacon counter, which pleased him a lot.

Maggie's mother had had a successful operation on her varicose veins and felt like a new woman. She had been made supervisor of cleaning. One of Maggie's brothers had, in fact, gone to train with a big English soccer team, though the others were going nowhere fast.

Her grandmother went to a day centre now; things for old people had vastly improved. She loved it there, where she could terrorise everyone happily all day.

Maggie's grandfather, who when he was seventy couldn't cook his own lunch, met when he was seventy-two a tough woman who taught him to cook everything, married him and turned round his life.

Maggie won the Gold Medal in Law and was in a position to choose from any law firm in the country.

She knew her father wanted to take her back to the dull, snobbish restaurant, which had by now become totally passe. She couldn't tell him that the place had fallen from grace and that no one went there now.

She didn't need to tell him.

Once Maggie's Gold Medal was announced in the papers, an invitation arrived at her father's house. Brenda and Patrick Brennan, who were now managing the magnificent Quentins Restaurant, hoped the family would join them for a Serious Celebration. They wrote to say that their luck had turned on the night they met the Nolans. It was only fitting that they all mark this in a special way.

Maggie's father was a generous man. He had no idea that Quentins was the last word these days.

"Well, I'd like to have got you the best, Maggie, but seeing as these people did well, it would seem to be ungracious not to go, don't you think?"

"You've never been ungracious, Da."

"And you know it's not just to have a free dinner? I have the money saved to go back to that smart place," he said, anxious there should be no misunderstandings.

They went to Quentins by bus, but they would go home by taxi - this was going to be Mam's treat. Maggie's brothers were not overawed this time. They were four years older for one thing; but the place didn't try to put them down.

Maggie recognised the woman. Everyone was greeting her, trying to catch her eye. Brenda Brennan was warm to everyone but dallied at no table; she was always on the move.

"We can never thank you enough for this," Brenda began.

"And do you run this place yourself, Miss? I must say, it's very respectable-looking," Da interrupted.

Brenda said she did run it, and that Chef Patrick this time had a cake with a gold medal on it for Maggie.

It was ten times as good a meal as the one they had had four years ago, they all agreed.

Mam's taxi arrived to take them home and they were getting their coats.

"Why did you do it for us, Mrs. Brennan?" Maggie asked quietly as they were leaving. "All that business about pretending that your luck changed the night -we met you .. ."

"But that was true," Brenda said. "That was the night we realised we could not go on working for a place like that, no matter how good it looked on a CV. Supercilious, snobbish people, no welcome, no warmth, no love of food

"How do you remember it was the night we "were there?" Maggie wanted to know.

"You were real people, honest people having a celebration. They treated you like dirt. We couldn't bear it. We talked about you for a long time that night. The evening seemed to sum up how degrading it was to "work for a place that treated its visitors so badly. And as it happened I came across some information the next night, sort of heard, you might say, that they were looking for people to run Quentins. And because of your family we somehow found the courage. We gave in our notice - and, as you see, it worked out rather well."

Maggie knew Mrs. Brennan wasn't an emotional person. Not someone you might hug. But Maggie still put a hug in her eyes. And saw it had been received. The woman swallowed and spoke slowly.

In fact, Maggie, as you must realise, I'm very much understating it - it's a habit you get into at work. It all worked out better than we could have dreamed. It's we who owe you - that's why you were our guests tonight and you must come again."

"When my parents are twenty-five years married, maybe?" Maggie said with a smile.

Brenda Brennan agreed. "That, or when your brother gets picked to play soccer for Ireland. My brother-in-law out in the kitchen recognised him - he wants his autograph. Would it be all right if he asked your brother for it, do you think?"

I think it would make this into the most Serious Celebration this family has ever known," Maggie said.

Drew had never been to Ireland in his life. And had never even considered going there until the company announced that the sales conference would be held in Dublin. Moira said it would just be a piss-up, an excuse to waste even more money than usual. "The company is paying for it all," Drew protested.

"Not for everything," Moira said. She knew that there would be pints and outings and items that no company would pay for.

Drew and Moira had been going out together for three years. A lot of things were agreed between them but nothing was settled. They loved each other, that "was agreed, and they would marry and have two children one day, that was agreed. But when this would happen was not settled.

Moira wanted them to get a house, which meant having a deposit. Drew wanted them both to move into his flat which was cheaper than Moira's. Moira wanted them to have a big wedding with all their friends and relations. Drew wanted them to have six people at the Register Office with pints and sandwiches afterwards.

Moira thought you only had one crack at life and you should give it your all, like putting away a certain amount of money each week. Drew thought you had only one crack at life and you should enjoy yourself first time round.

Moira realised that there was no way Drew would not go to a sales conference in Dublin which he insisted on thinking of as a freebie outing but she knew would cost money. Drew realised that he was going to have to come to some decision about all this very soon. He had given up the Friday night out with the lads, and he had given up the thought of ever having a decent new jacket. Now it looked as if he were going to have to give up the notion of having any extras while he was on this great trip.

When he kissed her goodbye before the conference, they both knew that something would have to be settled by the time this meeting was over. They were nervous because they didn't dare to say it to each other. It was too big, too important, in their lives.

When they got to Dublin they stayed in a big, modern hotel. The first night, Drew told his colleagues that he was way behind with his figures. He'd love to come out with them on the town but seriously now, they'd have to forgive him this time. They accused him of being over-eager and ambitious. He was going to be a tycoon, they said, a captain of industry.

Drew grinned weakly. He was trying to save the twenty pounds he would have spent in the pubs and more, much more, if they had gone on to a nightclub. He saw there were tea-making facilities in the hotel, so he would have tea and biscuits and look at what was on television. He might even do what he had said and look over his sales figures, examine some trends.

If only he got a promotion, then he and Moira would not have to set aside an amount that meant they literally had nothing to spend on fun any more. He yearned to talk to her, hear her say something loving, to remind himself why all this self-denial was necessary. But as they had to pay for their own calls, phoning Scotland would have been a huge extravagance.

The Irish Lottery was on. That's what he needed, win that and come back a millionaire. But it was too late. If only he had bought a ticket on the way in from the airport. He saw later that there had been six lucky winners. He could have been one of them with never a financial worry again. But it hadn't happened.

Drew began to feel unreasonably irritated with those six lucky winners. What had they done after all, except have the time to buy a lottery ticket? But he tried to get this very useless and destructive envy out of his system. He reminded himself that people made their own luck and created their own chances. He had read enough of this in management books to believe it might even be true.

The next chance he got he would take. There were many chances that he could take now, this very minute. He would just learn the names of all the senior people who would be addressing them tomorrow and study the little biographies that were among the papers they were all meant to look at.

Maybe he might look brighter than he was. Possibly someone could pick Drew for a promotion. It happened all the time. Next day, he did seem to be brighter than the others, mainly because he had been asleep some four hours before any of them. And he hadn't discovered how much better Guinness tasted when drunk by the River Liffey in great quantities. So this was possibly why he was among twenty of the group chosen to go to dinner at Quentins.

Drew found out that not only was the company paying, but they would all go there and back in taxis, so this was another huge saving.

Quentins was certainly very elegant. You had to ring at the door to get in. They had a notice saying that they did this, as they liked to welcome their guests. Drew decided they probably also liked to keep out unsuitable people. He must remember the details of it all to tell Moira.

Moira worked as a waitress and would love to move to a classier place. She would even press her face to the windows of smart restaurants at home to get the feel of smart places. She would love to be walking in by his side tonight, to a place like this.

Would it ever happen? Or would he put so much in his savings that there would be nothing left for him ever to have a treat like a night out in Quentins or somewhere of its class?

Some of the lads he had been at school with were into great schemes for making money. One of them had a big line in issuing fake certificates for old motor cars.

Drew would have been able to do this and square it with his conscience. People spent far too much time and bureaucracy on cars anyway. But of course Moira wouldn't hear of it. Only Crims did that she said. Moira and her family had a great fear of criminals and what they called the Grim mentality.

Sometimes it would have been much easier not to love Moira, she was so unbending in her ways. Not flexible like other girls he had known. And she didn't understand how hard it was to go on a trip like this and be thought tight-fisted. She would say something stupid about the bosses watching him and how impressed they'd be.

That wasn't the way it happened in the real world. The boss class often spent more than anyone else.

Still here he was now on a real fancy night out and he was going to enjoy it. Maybe they might give away little boxes of Irish chocolates and bits of Irish glass as well, then he'd have a present for Moira and for his mother's birthday.

Drew thought to himself that it would be nice not to have to be so obsessed with money and the price of things. Not to be looking at the floor endlessly in case someone had dropped a wad of notes. Would he give it in to the authorities if he found one? Oh how he would not!

When they were all in the restaurant they were shown to two round tables for ten. The young waiters and waitresses were Europeans from different lands, all smartly dressed in their dark trousers and white shirts.

Around them moved an elegant woman, Mrs. Brennan, apparently, who put everyone at their ease, translating the names of dishes casually as if they had all easily known them already. She had a way of explaining how they were made as if it were peculiar to the restaurant. She even said in a conspiratorial whisper to Drew and his end of the table that they must be very highly thought of indeed, since the best of wines had been ordered and no effort was to be spared.

His mind wandered back to the unfairness of life. Why could some people have this lifestyle all the time, and for others like himself must it be a one time only that he would describe to Moira at second hand.

He didn't even need a whole sixth of the lottery. Just a few hundred pounds would be fine.

He dragged himself back to the conversation the others were having. It was about a girl with big sad eyes sitting at the next table. The table was set for two but she was alone.

Some of his mates thought she might be persuaded to join them. Drew had his doubts. Quentins didn't look like a place where you could pick up a bird at a nearby table. And she looked tearful. Quite possibly having drunk a little too much. Much wiser to leave her where she was. "Aw, don't mind Drew, he's in love," someone said.

He was, he knew it, but unless he had some more money soon, he might not be and that was very frightening. Drew decided to think about something else.

Nobody was talking to Mr. Ball, the Head of Department, an anxious uncommunicative man with no small talk whatsoever. But it was either talk to Mr. Ball or think about Moira. And the same Moira had often said that everyone was interesting if only you could find their subject.

"Are you a golfer, Mr. Ball?" Drew asked desperately.

"Oh no, Drew, never saw the sense of it, actually," Mr. Ball said, closing the door to any more talk of that.

Drew wasn't giving up. "But you look so fit, Mr. Ball, I thought you must do some sport and I know I once asked you, did you play football, and you said no."

Mr. Ball looked left of him and right of him and then he told Drew in endless detail about his visits to the gym. There was no point in going once or twice a week, he said. You had to go five days a week. Fortunately, this hotel here in Dublin had a reasonable workout room. Had Drew seen it? No? Well, Mr. Ball would show him round it tomorrow.

Tm sorry to drone on about money, Mr. Ball, but is that gym you go to back home expensive?"

Mr. Ball mentioned the annual figure and saw the look on Drew's face.

"Of course, when you get to the next level in the firm, if you"re promoted, the company will pay for your subscription. It's in their interest to have fit personnel," he said. In truth, he had never thought of Drew as on the fast track.

"And tell me about your programme, Mr. Ball," Drew said in desperation, nailing on to his face a smile of interest as he heard about muscles and movements and routines. He nodded and shook his head as he heard of machines that did all they promised and those that did not. He got an ache in his face but Mr. Ball thought that Drew was fascinated. Drew saw that Mr. Ball was loath to leave the conversation and only had to do so out of a sense of duty.

Drew joined his own colleagues again. They were still talking about the girl and speculating abut whether she might be an available companion for the evening.

"Get sense," Drew advised them. "She'd be no fun at all. Look at her, she's crying. Didn't any of you notice?"

At that moment, Mrs. Brennan the manageress woman had arranged that the customer with tears in her eyes be helped to the door gently and discreetly by one of the young waiters. The taxi had already been phoned for by the restaurant. Possibly she was someone who ate here regularly and maybe drank a little too much. Someone worth looking after. It was all done with great dignity, Drew noticed. Then he saw the wallet on the floor.

He leaned back and put it into his pocket. Nobody had seen. He went to the gentlemen's cloakroom. Inside the cubicle he opened it. A big, black, soft leather wallet. It had credit cards, receipts, tickets for a theatre and a letter.

It also had plenty of cash.

Silly girl, drunk on her own, leaving without checking. She could have lost it in the taxi. Or on the pavement while getting into the taxi. Or getting out of the taxi.

He would take the cash and tomorrow he would mail the wallet back to the restaurant anonymously.

He never knew when he decided to read the letter. He wasn't a criminal, just someone taking a chance. She was called Judy and she wrote to some guy saying she was sorry to plead and beg with him to have this last dinner with her, but she had so many things to tell him - how much she loved him and how nothing else mattered. And she had to tell him that she was pregnant, but she would be noble about it and never tell his wife.

And Judy would not ask him for child support. She wanted nothing from him, except the memory of their love and the hope of their child in the future. She would have this last dinner, leave early and hand him this letter and then go out of his life. She wanted only that he would know how much he had been loved.

Drew sat there and thought about love and deception and how some people had it really very, very difficult indeed.

He left the men's room and went straight to Mrs. Brennan.

"I found this under a table," he said.

"Yes, I sort of noticed you did," she said.

She wasn't disapproving or anything.

"Did you know anything about the .. . um ... the situation?" he asked.

"A little. It was not a happy one, but I don't think I want to go into any of that . . ."

"It's just, I'm from miles away. I'll never be here again. I wondered should anyone tell him she's pregnant?"

If Mrs. Brennan was startled that he revealed this to her, admitting that he had read a private letter, she made no criticism.

"I don't think that will change anything at all one way or the other," she said reflectively.

"But shouldn't a man know that he was going to be a father? She intended giving it to him tonight but he didn't show up."

"He's quite good at not showing up, it never stops the ladies." She shook her head at the folly of people and their relationships.

"So he'll never know?" Drew was astounded.

"Or maybe care," Brenda said.

"That's hard to believe," he said.

"For a nice young man like you and a decent, hardworking woman like me it is, but not for people like the no-show tonight."

"I'm not a nice young man," Drew said. "But it's all there, every penny of it."

"I'm sure it is," Brenda Brennan said with a smile.

"Why are you sure?" He was puzzled. She was serene and she was non-judgemental.

"Because if it wasn't all there, then you'd just have kicked it under the table when you had a change of heart," she said simply.

"A change of heart!" he said, surprised at her accuracy.

"Sure, that's "what it "was. Can I offer you a dinner here some evening, another time, you and a friend?" she suggested.

"It would mean getting back here all the way from Scotland," Drew said.

The others were all getting up to leave now, and asking about nightclubs.

"Not for me, alas," Drew said. "Too old and staid. I'm heading off in my Head of Department's taxi for an early night."

"I've a feeling it will stand to you," Brenda Brennan said.

Drew saw her talking to Mr. Ball, but he knew that she wasn't telling tales, that he had almost stolen a wallet.

He only discovered next day what she had been saying.

That he was a remarkable young man, who had not only rescued a wallet for another customer and handed it in, but who had been caring enough to be concerned over the woman's distress.

Mr. Ball felt the very same about Drew. A boy who might have been overlooked before.

But once he had discovered Drew's interest in the gym and his obvious sense of disappointment that he couldn't afford to join one, Mr. Ball, too, had a change of heart. He would recommend the boy's promotion the moment they got back to Scotland. Mon often wished that she was back in Sydney, Australia. On a day like today, she could go out to the beach and lie there with her friends. In Ireland it was what they thought of as summer, but truly it was not a day for the sand. She would be blown to death by the wind, heartbroken by the small tidal ripple instead of the rollers she knew and loved back home, frozen by the ice-cold water if she ever dared get into it.

Still, she hadn't come to Ireland looking for a life of surf. She had come as part of a great world tour. Oddly, there had not been all that much of a tour. It was meant to start with a week in Rome, and then a week in Dublin and six weeks hitchhiking around the rest of Ireland, then a dozen other lands before going back to the rest of her life. But something strange had happened - after the week in Rome she had arrived in Dublin totally broke.

It wasn't exactly that her money had been stolen or lost or anything. It was just that she had managed to spend in one week almost all her two years" savings on a man called Antonio. It was hard to realise quite how, but this had somehow happened. And so, on her first day in Ireland, she needed a job. There was an advertisement in the newspaper that she read on her way in from Dublin airport and she had phoned for an

interview, got the job in Quentins. Somehow the time had passed.

"You've fallen in love, that's why you're still there," her mother accused her by e-mail. But it wasn't true.

"There must be a crazy scene with those Irishmen," her friends wrote. But that wasn't true either.

What had happened was that Mon, or Monica Green (as she was never called), had settled in. She had worked in eleven different jobs since she left college, but for some reason she could never understand, Quentins was the first place she really called home. Patrick Brennan, the chef who taught her how to cook when things weren't too busy, his younger brother, called Blouse for some reason, who was a little less than intelligent but certainly not a fool. Patrick's cool, unflustered wife Brenda, who seemed to know everyone in Dublin. She felt as if she was some kind of a younger sister, part of the family. Mon was part of this team and she liked it. No need to move on. For the moment.

"We'll have to find you a fellow," Brenda Brennan said unexpectedly to Mon one morning.

"Why?" Mon was genuinely surprised.

It wasn't the way Brenda usually talked. She must have a reason for saying it. And indeed she had.

"You're very good, the customers like you, Mon, you'll go on somewhere else unless you get caught up in some complicated messy romance like they all do."

Brenda smiled as she spoke, as if she alone knew the ways of the mad world they lived in.

"Any advice and help always welcome," Mon said.

"Someone once said to me that I should keep my heart open as well as my eyes. It worked."

Mon gasped - immaculate, ice maiden Brenda telling her this. Maybe she was right. But after that amazingly foolish and romantic adventure with Antonio in Rome, Mon was being cautious. Perhaps she had swung too much to the other side. Maybe she should keep her heart more open. Or a fraction more open anyway.

Mon went through the restaurant before lunch as she did every day, checking that everything "was in place on every single table. Mr. Harris from the bank next door came in, to eat his lunch alone as he did three days a week. Dull man with nothing to say. His head always in a book, usually with a brown paper cover. Once Mon had laughingly asked him if it was pornography and his eyes had been cold. She made no more jokes. Her cheerful Aussie humour had been very unsuccessful.

"Miss Green," he nodded at her.

"Mr. Harris," Mon nodded back.

But Brenda had insisted on unfailing politeness and charm, even to those who did not return it. So Mon nailed on her smile as she handed him the menu.

"Chef has done a really beautiful monkfish today, Mr. Harris. I think you'd like it."

It was hard to know what the man would or would not like. He seemed to eat without noticing. None of them liked serving him.

About thirty-five, fortyish. Must have some big job in the bank, since he could afford to eat in Quentins so often. Never a guest or companion, never a newspaper or magazine, never a smile to left or right of him. Just studying books covered in brown paper.

Mr. Harris said he would try the monkfish and as Mon leaned over to pour him a glass of water, she accidentally knocked against his book, which fell to the ground and the cover came off.

It wasn't pornography, but it was something equally surprising. Pop psychology. A book offering twenty ways to a woman's heart. A Never Known to Fail guide to making any woman love you.

Mr. Harris and Mon Green looked aghast at each other and the book revealed in all its humiliating pathos.

Someone had to say something.

"Does it work, do you think?" Mon asked as she handed it back to him.

Mr. Harris had a face like thunder. "Why do you ask?" he wondered.

"Well, over a year back, when I was in Rome, I met this guy, Antonio, and well, I'd have read anything to get him, and they have that kind of guide for women too, to get to fellows" hearts, and you see, I couldn't find the bookstores that sold English books and then it was too late . .."

She knew that she was burbling on and on, but she couldn't stop.

"Too late?" Mr. Harris looked interested. "How did you know it was too late?"

"Well, Antonio had gone, and all my money. You see, I was going to invest in a sandwich bar with him

"He took your money?" Mr. Harris was horrified.

"Yes, well, that wasn't the worst bit ... actually none of it was too bad, but I'd sure like to have known the Way to his Heart," Mon admitted. Mr. Harris was looking at Mon as if he had never seen her before. "You mean, women actually read these books too?"

"You bet they do. Maybe the person you fancy is reading one "wherever she's having lunch today."

"I don't think so." Mr. Harris shook his head sadly.

"Mr. Harris, would you like to have a drink with me about six o"clock this evening and we could sort of pool what we think we know about the opposite sex?" Mon heard herself say.

Brenda Brennan was, of course, passing the table at that moment. She slowed down slightly so that she could hear Mr. Harris saying that nothing would give him more pleasure, and where would Miss Green suggest?

And for weeks they went out and sought manuals on how to be appealing to the opposite sex, which mainly involved being thoughtful and considerate and tactile.

Everyone knew that they fancied each other long before Mr. Harris and Miss Green did. Their faces lit up when they saw each other. The six o"clock drinks turned into dinners, and theatre visits. And when the annual Bank Dinner Dance came round, Mon was surprised that everyone in the restaurant knew that she was going to go as his guest.

They thought for a considerable time that they were only exchanging helpful books with brown paper covers. But it turned out, of course, that they didn't need these books at all. Mr. Harris and Miss Green had well found the way to each other's hearts long before either of them realised it.

The January Sales started earlier every year. Most of the big stores opened the very day after Christmas. A lot of people protested and said it was ruining family life. But secretly they were often relieved. Family life could often be overrated. Patrick Brennan said they should cash in on it, serve a comforting lunch to take the weight off the weary shoppers" feet.

"And what about the weary staff's feet?" Brenda asked. But she knew that he was right. People would love it. It would take the effort out of shopping if people knew that they could hand their parcels in to Quentins" big roomy cloakroom and sit down to a lunch "where cold turkey would make no appearance.

"We won't force anyone to work unless they want to. We wouldn't need the full team."

Patrick's brother Blouse and his wife Mary would help. There was no way they could open their organic vegetable shop that day. On the day after Christmas people wanted to buy digital cameras, copper saucepans or designer shoes. They did not want Blouse and Mary Brennan's parsnips, guaranteed free from pesticides.

They put a discreet little notice on each table in the restaurant advertising a Special Sale Lunch with a limited but interesting menu on 26 December. Early booking was essential. The menu was not, strictly speaking, limited, since they planned to serve Patrick's legendary steak and kidney pies, rack of lamb and a fiery Bouillabaisse.

Yvonne booked a table for four as soon as she heard about it. It was the ideal choice for her boss Frank. He could take his three children to lunch there as a treat, something totally different on this, the first Christmas that he would spend away from his home. Frank's difficult wife, Anna, who had laid down so many ground rules and made things so awkward, would not object to this. It was quite extraordinary, Yvonne thought, that Anna, who had left Frank for another man, was still calling the shots. She still lived in the family home, and she had the children for Christmas. Frank was altogether too easy-going. He said that there was no point in upsetting little Daisy, Rose and Ivy still further. The whole thing wasn't their fault. He seemed to imply that it was nobody's fault. Anna had suddenly fallen in love with this other man, Harry, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Everyone at the office was furious with him. Some even went so far as to say that if he were as passive as this then perhaps Anna had a case for leaving him.

But Yvonne knew better. Frank was a loving husband and father who put in long hours in computer sales so that his family could have a holiday abroad, a new carpet, add decking in the garden. Yvonne knew how he worried about these expenses. She saw him sigh and frown when he thought that no one was looking.

Yvonne was always looking at Frank, but he never saw. Why should he see her? The small, dumpy assistant in the sales department. Yvonne lived with her handicapped mother. Yvonne, who had no style or love of her own. A million miles from the tall, blonde Anna, who only had to smile and everyone did what she said.

She told her mother about it.

"And will you go too?" her mother asked eagerly.

Sometimes Yvonne despaired. She would love to have had a great lunch on the day after Christmas in a smart, buzzy restaurant with Frank and his three children. Love it more than anything, but it would have been entirely inappropriate and intrusive. The only part she could play was to call his attention to the lunch and make the reservation for him.

"Oh, no, Mother," Yvonne said. "That wouldn't do at all."

"You must go out yourself over Christmas, Yvonne," she said. "I'm fine here on my own with my thoughts and my television."

I know, Mother, but there's really not all that many places I want to go." Yvonne looked into the flames and thought about being thirty-six, the same age as Anna. Even Mother, who was in a wheelchair, had once had a life and a love and a child. Wasn't it odd the way the world turned out for people? Frank reported that Anna had been highly approving of the lunch-in-Quentins idea. She had even praised him for thinking of it.

Tm afraid I didn't say it was your idea," he apologised. She wanted to lean over and stroke the side of his face. But she restrained herself. He would have been horrified and embarrassed and eventually the nice, easy friendship they had would have disappeared. Christmas Day was cold and windy in the city centre. Brenda Brennan cooked a turkey for Patrick, Blouse and Mary. And the new baby Brendan. Mon and her fiance were with them.

Yan the Breton waiter telephoned to send them greetings and to say that his father was now fully recovered and home from hospital. Mon's family called from Australia to say they had been sunburned at the beach and to know if Mon's Mr. Harris was still on for the wedding. Or had he seen sense?

Mr. Harris, flushed with port, told them all that he just adored Mon and he didn't care who knew it. They ate in the kitchen of Quentins and played Country and Western music all day long.

"I hope we'll all think it's worth opening tomorrow," Patrick said.

They reassured him. "Isn't the place going to be full, and we don't get that every Tuesday," Brenda said, ever practical. Blouse said he loved the thought of being a waiter for the day, all dressed up and people thinking he was the real thing.

"You are the real thing," they all said to Blouse at the same time. They talked about the bookings they had taken. Blouse had taken one from a woman in a wheelchair "who had never been there before. She had been very anxious for a table where she and her companion could be seen by everyone. Brenda had booked a table for a young man who was going to propose to his girlfriend and wondered could they have champagne on ice ready. And if it were not needed he would let them know. They all agreed that there was no other job quite as interesting as watching the human race at feeding time. Christmas Day was cold and windy outside the big house where Anna and Frank's three little girls opened their presents. Harry stood watching.

"It's a bit rough on Frank that he's not here to see it," he murmured to Anna.

Her blue eyes were sad. "We have to start as we mean to go on," she said, "and he does get them all day tomorrow."

Frank didn't notice the weather as he sat in his sister's home playing with her children instead of with his own. Trying all the while to avoid everyone's pity for him and their rage at Anna.

Yvonne and her mother sat together as they had for many a year. Yvonne's mother was resplendent in the fine wool stole with a soft lilac colour which had been Yvonne's gift. Yvonne was sitting speechless, looking at the invitation for two to lunch at Quentins the following day, which had been her mother's gift to her. There was no way she could return or refuse to accept a present like this. She would have to go through with it.

Frank called for the girls at ten-thirty. Anna looked beautiful as she always did. Harry looked a bit embarrassed, not sure how to play it. The girls were excited, they dragged him over to the Christmas tree to see what Santa Claus had brought. All of the gifts were exactly what they had been hoping for. And Mummy had given them each a new velvet dress.

"What time would you like me to deliver everyone home?" he asked mildly.

Anna gave a tinkling laugh. "Frank, honestly, you don't have to ask, you are their father. We aren't the kind of people who have court rulings. Keep them all day until they're tired. Right, girls?"

Right, they said, pleased that there was no row. Daisy was nearly nine and almost grown up, so when the others weren't listening she whispered some of her theories about Santa Claus to her father. Frank listened thoughtfully and said it was hard to know all right and we should all keep an open mind on things.

"Do you mind about Harry being here, Dad?" she said.

"No, darling, not if it makes your mother happy." He tried to read her face, but wasn't sure if he had given the right answer or not. The shops were crowded. It was hard for six-, seven- and eight year-olds to make decisions. The little legs were tired when they got to Quentins, the first guests.

"You're welcome," the waiter said. "Can I take your parcels for you, ladies?" Daisy, Rose and Ivy giggled at being called ladies. "How will you know which are ours?" Ivy asked.

"You'll give me your names and I'll write them down," he said.

"What's your name?" Daisy asked.

"Blouse Brennan," the man said. I

"Why?" Ivy asked.

"When I was a young fellow I called my shirt my blou forgot all about it, but no one else did."

"Well, a shirt is a sort of blouse," said Daisy.

"That's what I always thought," Blouse said, pleased.

Frank looked at his eldest daughter with pride. The restaurant rilled up, mainly families, the odd twosome. Even though he felt a deep sense of loneliness not to be part of a proper family, Frank thought from time to time that he got envious glances with his three beautiful daughters. Alert and smiling and interested in everyone.

"Look at that couple kissing," Rose said as a bottle of champagne was opened at a nearby table.

"Does that woman have any legs?" Daisy said in her bell-like voice.

The woman in the wheelchair turned round with a smile. I do, dear, but they're not any use to me, so the waiter wheeled me in up the ramp. He was very helpful."

"I saw you come in. That was Blouse that wheeled you in."

"Blouse, is it? A very nice young man," the old lady nodded.

Finally her companion looked up from staring at the floor. It was Yvonne from work.

Frank "was amazed and pleased. "So you decided to come yourself, too," he said happily. "Isn't it great! I must introduce you to my daughters." He brought them over to Yvonne's table where they all stood in everyone's way until Blouse Brennan suggested that he merge the two parties to save on space.

Yvonne's face was scarlet. "I can't tell you how sorry I am, Frank. This was all my mother's idea," she hissed at him.

"But I can't tell you how delighted I am . .." he began.

They could hear the children talking to Yvonne's mother, asking her how her legs had decayed, and did she bother wearing stockings, and what would happen if the restaurant went on fire? "Blouse would push me down the ramp," Yvonne's mother said.

"Indeed I would, Madam," he said as he tied Ivy's table napkin around her neck, the "way the French do.

"What lovely dresses you have." The old woman felt the coloured velvet frocks.

"They're from our mother. She doesn't live with Dad any more, you see, so that's why she's not here." Daisy seemed to have a mission to explain today.

"So you must remember it all to tell her. She'll want to know what you did because she loves you so much, like your father does. He must love you a lot to think of taking you to a very high class restaurant like this."

"Is it high class?" Rose was interested.

"The highest there is." Yvonne's mother was firm on this.

"It's a pity they're not both here together," Daisy sighed.

"Oh, I don't know ... you can have better times separately. Like Yvonne's father and I. We loved her to bits, but we changed in loving each other, and she was always happy with both of us, weren't you, Yvonne?"

"Yes, I was, indeed," Yvonne said, astounded.

"So her dad loved someone else eventually, and I loved someone else, but it didn't take away one bit from loving Yvonne. Isn't that right?" she barked at her daughter.

"Oh, absolutely right, Mother. Like as if your heart got bigger or something and there was more love in it," Yvonne said, wild eyed at the whole thing.

Frank patted her knee and stroked her hand. "Yvonne, I wish you knew how much this means .. ." he began.

But Yvonne was listening to what her mother might be up to now. It was reasonably harmless. She was asking her new best friend Blouse Brennan for some bread that they could throw to the ducks in St Stephen's Green.

"Can we come too?" Rose asked.

"Please," Frank begged. "Please." And it was arranged. There would be time later, much later, when she would tell him that her mother and father had never separated, and he had died fifteen years ago and her mother had never looked at another man. This was not the time to do it. The Special Sale Lunch was nearly over, the rain had stopped and it was time to go and feed the ducks.

PART III

Chapter Nine.

Ella looked up when the stories were told. As far as she could see, they had gone well. At least she had managed to hold their interest. She must leave them now and give them a chance to talk about it all. She moved swiftly. No, no, she would get herself a taxi, she pleaded. It was part of the excitement of being in New York. Please let them not see her out, she would much prefer them to stay and discuss what she had told them.

And then she escaped. Down in the lift, out of the quiet building into the amazingly noisy traffic. And then she got to her little hotel, which was beginning to seem like home, and up to her

room.

Now she could do what she had been putting off until she got her work settled. She sat down and opened up Don Richardson's computer.

It got dark in New York as she trawled through the computer. Bank account numbers in the Isle of Man, in the Cayman Islands, in Switzerland. None of it made any sense, since the names were in some kind of code.

She recognised property agreements there, but none in Don's name or in his father-in-law's. Then she saw the file with her own name and her heart leaped. Maybe he had made an investment for her as he had once told her he would. Something to provide for her after his time. She gulped in case he really had done that. He must have loved her at one stage. But it didn't seem likely. It wasn't Ella Brady. This Brady family, a family of five, a man, his son, the son's wife and two children, and they were living in Playa de los Angeles. There were letters about them to banks and from banks. Whoever they were, these Bradys had plenty of money. And a lot of it deposited very recently. By far the largest sum had been the week that she had been in Spain with Don. When he had been away from the hotel. When his wife Margery Rice, mother of his two children, was there. Suddenly she realised that not only had he taken everything else she had but he had also taken her name.

There were so many things she could do. She could find the number of the Fraud Squad in Dublin and tell them the machine was ready for collection. She could contact an Irish television station. She could telephone Don now; the Brady family had a phone number and were listed in his machine. She could tell him that if he restored all that her father had lost, she would hand him back the computer, no questions asked. She could contact one of the various insurance companies involved and offer to give it to them. She realised that this was a decision she had to make entirely on her own. Everyone's judgement would be partisan. They would want to do what they thought was best for her or for them or for somebody. Why did she not give it straight to the police? That was what a normal citizen would do.

She opened the mini bar in her room and took out a miniature Jack Daniel's and drank it from a tooth mug. It made nothing clearer. It did nothing to sharpen the blurred edges. If you had loved someone, slept with him, shared everything with him for month after month, you didn't hand over the files without a backward glance. There was some kind of mad nobility about it ... Even if be behaved like a bastard, she was not going to. This was just one more test of her loyalty.

There was a way she wanted to show him that not everyone sold out their friends and lovers. She didn't want to talk to Deirdre about it, or Nick or Sandy or anyone. She had to make up her own mind what to do. In some crazy way she wanted to talk to Don. Well, that was an option too. Mad as it sounded. There were so many things she wanted answers to. Like had he always known he was going to call himself Brady or was it because of her? Like how could he have planned everything so meticulously and then left the machine in her flat? Did he intend to or was it an oversight? And if he had always loved Margery, why had they lived such totally separate lives? And did he have any guilt, or could he live with it all, saying it was just showbiz? In some insane way, she

could imagine the conversation. But she would not have it from here. She had been alarmed to know that he was now looking for the machine and sending messengers around the place trying to track her down. It had been a bit frightening.

But she hadn't felt frightened before. In fact, having the laptop made her feel in some odd way more secure. And as long as she had this computer in her possession, he might get in touch. She realised now that this was why she had never let it go. It was her last link with him. For four months it had been a sort of comfort to her to know that it was there physically. Some solid reminder of all they had.