Quentins

But things were suddenly very different now. She could no longer tell herself that Don knew nothing of all that had been going on. That he had been swept along somehow in his father-in law's plans. That there was going to be a perfectly innocent explanation.

Having opened the lid of the laptop, she could no longer tell herself this. It was beginning to dawn on her that Don Richardson was deeply involved. For the very first time she realised that she might indeed be in real danger and she had no idea what to do. She was so tired she couldn't think.

She would do nothing tonight. There was no need. After all, the briefcase containing the computer had been in her possession for over four months. If she had been going to turn him in, he could well assume that she would have done it by now. He must think that she had never got into it and had decided not to hand it over to those who would be able to learn what it contained. He should be feeling safe and secure now, so why on earth was he suddenly getting jittery and sending her messages about it? Maybe he really wanted to see her. A man went up the lane behind Tara Road and put a letter into what they called the Annexe of what used to be the Bradys" house. It was not in an envelope, just folded in half. It had been sent by e-mail and printed out, but with no name or identifying marks at the top.

Barbara and Tim Brady didn't hear it coming through the letterbox, because they were asleep. They didn't see it until the next morning at eight o"clock, when Barbara was going out to work. And she did not read it then because the hall was dark and she was running for the bus. She let herself out by the wooden door into the lane behind the house. The garden didn't belong to them any more. It never would again. In New York, Ella was in bed. Not asleep but resting. No pressure, no hurry, she told herself over and over.

She had to be at Derry and Kimberly's office tomorrow at nine. She must sleep well.

There was a system on the hotel telephone where you could switch it to automatic voice-mail. She switched it over. That meant if someone called in the night it wouldn't wake you. Not that she was expecting a call, but she had to be alert tomorrow, no matter what happened. No pressure, no hurry. He doesn't know you"ve opened it.

She had a long, warm bath, went to bed, and fell asleep with a television chat show blaring away.

So she missed the series of phone calls that began at about ten minutes after 3 a.m. New York time, just after everyone in Ireland had come to grips with the 8 a.m. news there. She didn't look at the little winking light until she was dressed and ready to leave the room. Hoping it wasn't a message from either Derry or Kimberly about the meeting, Ella dialled the number to retrieve the messages.

She sat in horror on the edge of her bed as she heard Nick and Deirdre and her father tell her what had happened.

These were the only households who knew where she was staying. Nothing they said made any sense. It was like words that were all jumbled, strung together, not proper sentences.

Only one more person knew her address and that was her new friend Harriet, the dealer who had sold her the dog collar. She had called also. Because Harriet's voice was less shocked, less horrified and sympathetic than the others, it was the only message that Ella understood.

"Listen, Ella. In case nobody's told you, he's killed himself out in Spain. He was scum. He wouldn't even stay and face what a mess he'd got everyone into. Probably half the country's already told you, but just in case I wanted you to be warned, just in case. You're worth twenty of him, so don't weep over him, Ella. He's not worth it."

When she got her breath back, she played the first three messages again. Now she understood what they were saying. It had to be true. They couldn't all have imagined it. Who should she phone first? Ella didn't want to talk to any of them.

She looked across at the computer. It really didn't matter any more. He had taken a boat out to jagged rocks and ended his life. She wondered had he choked or suffocated to death, or had his body been dashed against rocks? Had he any last-minute regrets and tried to survive? Don dead. Because of other people's money? Because of failure? Because he couldn't get his hands on that briefcase. Why hadn't she given it back to him? She hadn't even known what to do with it herself. If she had called him and said he could have it, then he would still be alive. She would call up the Irish newspapers on the Internet and see what they said. Before she talked to anyone, she needed to know more. Don Richardson's handsome face looked out of every newspaper in Ireland and even some in England. He was described as a disgraced financier. The newspapers congratulated themselves for having correctly speculated that he had been in hiding in Spain. It was reported that his small boat had foundered on rocks at a particularly dangerous Spanish headland. A place where nobody took any kind of craft. Certainly, an experienced boatman like Don Richardson would have been aware of its perils. His body had not been found. The tides in this area could have carried it far out to the Atlantic.

He had parked his car on a nearby pier and left several envelopes on the front seat. The contents had not been made public, but it was understood that the letters were in the nature of an apology and an attempted explanation. Sympathy and concern had already been expressed by many of the business community in Ireland. Shock and disbelief had been registered by those of his family and former friends when they had been contacted. Of his immediate family there was no information. Some papers thought that they were co-operating with the authorities. Others said there had been no trace of them. One newspaper, in an article called "Darling Margery", claimed that one of his letters had been to his wife, urging her to bring up the children in dignity. But since that newspaper was also one which in the past believed it had interviewed extraterrestrials and women who had been born with four legs, it was not given a lot of credence.

She telephoned her father first, but his phone was engaged. So she called Deirdre on her mobile. "I know there are ways it's sad for you," Dee said, "as well as being a terrible shock, but honestly there are ways it's for the best."

"That someone should kill himself, that's somehow the best?"

Tm thinking of you, Ella. That's all I'm doing. You can get on with your life now."

Tm getting on with my life fine. I've been doing that since he walked out on me months ago. It's he who's not getting on with his life. Can't breathe or talk or know what day it is today."

Tm not making light of it. I thought in a way it kind of ended all the stress . .. somehow." Deirdre was backtracking now. She had most definitely said the "wrong thing.

"What stress did I have that has ended? I still know he never loved me. I still have to work to pay off the debts he left my family with. What's better about his being at the bottom of the ocean?"

Tm so sorry, Ella, so very sorry," Deirdre said.

"I know you are, Dee. Just don't go round thinking it's all for the best, will you?" Deirdre made a quick call to Nick. "She's probably trying to get through to you now. Whatever you do, walk on eggshells. She doesn't see it all as the great relief that we do. I opened my big mouth and felt a right eejit."

"Thanks, Dee. I'll warn Sandy."

"Heavy on the sympathy, that's where I fell down," Deirdre said ruefully.

"You're a good friend. She'll know that."

"I hope." "Hi, Nick."

"Ella, poor, poor Ella."

"Why am I poor Ella, Nick? He never loved me. He stole

everyone's money. I was just saying to Dee, nothing's changed.

That's all the same as it was. He's dead, that's all. I just wanted to

talk to you about this meeting today." "You're going to it?" He was astounded. "Well, of course I am, isn't that what I'm here for?" "But maybe not today, Ella. I could call them and explain." "This is my job, my pitch. Don't dare interfere. The thing I

wanted to talk to you about was these clearances they talk about

so much here. Our usual form which people sign agreeing to let us

use the interview .. . that's enough, isn't it?"

"Those forms are fine. You can reassure them I checked all that out," said Nick, who decided that women were so unpredictable there was no point in trying to understand them any more. "Dad?"

"Oh, Ella, thank God you rang."

"You're not to get upset, Dad. He was a grown man. He knew what he was doing, he must have."

"No, it's not that."

"And people say you should remember the good, there was some good, Dad. I had a bit of a time trying to drag it up but I have, so . .."

"Ella, stop. Let me speak." His voice was like a cry.

She paused.

"He sent you a letter."

"What?"

"A letter was delivered here last night by hand."

"No, Dad, it can't be from him ... he was drowned out in Spain. How could he have ..."

"It was an e-mail, put through the door by someone when we were asleep."

"But how do you know it's from him?"

"It was open, not in an envelope."

"It's not from Don. Dad, there's a mistake ."

"I don't know what to do, Ella. I've told your mother. She didn't read it on her way out. .. she said I could take it to her office and she would fax it to you."

"Is it long, Dad?"

"No, it's quite short."

"So could you read it to me?"

"But perhaps you wouldn't want me to ..."

"You've read it already, Dad, and you've read it to Mother. Just once more. Please."

She could hear him putting on his glasses and rustling the paper. It probably took a couple of seconds. It seemed like infinity.

""Dearest Angel,"" he read. ""By the time you get this it will all be over. Maybe you won't care at all. You refused to get in touch with me through the many, many messages that I sent you, so perhaps you never cared. But I can't believe that. I can't believe those hours and hours of love meant nothing to you. So I want to say a special goodbye and a great thank you for making my life so happy, and to tell you three things.

""There was room in my heart for you all, you and my family. I couldn't leave them when the crisis hit. I was always trying to come back for you, too, but you wouldn't listen. The briefcase doesn't matter now. I won't be there to face what it reveals. If you have the generosity to throw it away on the grounds that I trusted it to you and that you would like to show me some trust too, then that would be great. But it's up to you. And lastly, I really liked your father and I know he lost clients" money because of my advice. I arranged some bank drafts, things that can be easily cashed. It's to say sorry to him and to you. This is the number of the deposit box. I wish I could give everything back to everybody. But then I wish a lot of things, mainly that I had years ahead with you, Angel Ella. You made me feel young and happy, you made my heart sing. Please know I loved you. Don."" Her father's voice trembled as he came to the end. There was a silence.

"Thank you, Dad."

I wish you weren't so many miles away, Ella. We wish you were at home."

I'm better off working hard, Dad. Believe me, I'm fine, and tell Mother, won't you?"

"He did love you, Ella."

"Of course he did, Dad."

She sat for a while and looked at her reflection in the mirror. None of this was happening. She would wake up soon back at a time before she had even met Don Richardson. When conversations like she was having this morning were totally impossible. But meantime she had to get on with what the rest of the day was going to throw at her.

She went down to the lobby and asked for a taxi to Derry and Kimberly's office. She was shown into their boardroom, where they sat close together at the far end of a table. They jumped up when she arrived.

"Ella!" Kimberly said as if surprised.

"You're here?" Derry was definitely surprised.

"We did say nine o"clock, didn't we?" Now Ella felt suddenly anxious. Maybe the shock had wiped everything out. They reassured her, that was what they had said. There was something odd about the way they looked at her, as if they hadn't expected her to make it. Had Nick disobeyed her and told them? No, he wouldn't dare.

She sat at the table and Kimberly poured coffee for them all.

"Have you been on to Dublin .. . um .. . this morning?" Derry began.

"We were just wondering if you'd been able to talk to anyone back there," Kimberly asked.

They did know something. But how?

Ella was determined not to weaken or to put her head down on the shiny table and cry her heart out to these people about her dead love. The man who had written her a letter and e-mailed it some hours before he killed himself.

I spoke to Nick," she said brightly. "He said to tell you that those clearance forms are standard." She looked from one to the other. They didn't seem to be listening to her. "So if that's all right, then . .." She waited for them to get on with the meeting.

"You know, if you don't feel like working or concentrating today, then that's fine, there are many other days." Derry's eyes were very kind and he actually patted her hand in a gesture you don't see outside the movies.

Kimberly was offering the same kind of sympathetic reassurance. "No need to force yourself," she pleaded. It can be done when you're feeling more up to it."

"You know," Ella said slowly. "Someone told you about me and Don and what happened."

"We always knew about you and Don from the outset," Derry said simply. "We just read what happened to him this morning."

"How did you know?" She felt cold.

"Same way as you knew I liked dogs. We looked up the files."

"That's different. You're a public person. There's no file on me," Ella said with spirit.

"There's plenty of information. We're not going to take up with a tiny outfit like Firefly Films, make a movie about a place we never heard of called Quentins, unless we have someone on the ground to advise us."

"And who did you ask to advise you?"

"A lawyer. Nice guy. He marked our card, everything you said all checked out. This is about four months ago, remember, so you were a bit in the news."

"And he bothers with tittle-tattle like that!" Ella was stung.

"To be fair to him, I think he was just letting us see everything that was on the table about everything. It has never had the slightest relevance to anything, only today we wondered . . ." Berry's voice trailed away.

"You know Don seems to have been thorough to the end," Kimberly said.

Ella wondered how they could work together so amicably after a long spell of marriage. Once there must have been a time when they had both wished for years ahead together .. . and, what were Don's words, when they had felt young and happy and made each other's hearts sing.

Ella tried to lift her coffee cup but her hand was shaking so she put it down again. She must pull herself together, banish the sound of his voice. She must. But at this point she could almost hear Don saying, "I want to say a special goodbye, a special goodbye, special goodbye. .." It was booming through her head.

She gripped the sides of the table very hard, but she felt herself falling down. Right down into a great black pit with the voice still there in her ears. When she saw shapes they were vague shapes first, then they turned into legs. They were legs of chairs, and Kimberly's amazing, shapely ankles in their high dark shoes, and also legs in brown trousers, and eventually she saw Derry King's face only inches from her own. The square, lined face that gave nothing away. Except now it was worried and full of concern.

"She's coming round, Kim," he said with relief.

"Keep her head down. You're meant to let the blood flow to the head." Kimberly was authoritative.

"We'll have to lift her back on to a chair then, to get her head down."

Gently they did that, and she actually did feel something happening to her head as if everything really was sliding back into place.

"What happened?" she began, but by the time she asked the question she knew the answer. She had fainted. She struggled to sit up, but she could feel Derry's hand on her neck and she could hear his voice speaking urgently.

"You're just fine. Keep your head down. Breathe deeply, you'll be okay in ten seconds."

Ella counted to ten and then sat up. They were both looking at her anxiously. She managed a weak grin. "Textbook lesson on how not to present your case," she said feebly.

"We've all the time in the world. Stop fussing," Derry said. "You've had a shock," Kimberly said.

"But I was fine and suddenly everything tilted."

"Could you be pregnant?" Kimberly asked.

Derry seemed startled by her question, but Ella wasn't at all put out by it. "No, when you consider all the disasters that have happened . .. and there have been many . . . that's not one of them."

"Maybe you had no breakfast?" Derry wondered.

"I can't really remember if I had or not, but that wouldn't be it."

"Your colour is coming back a little," Kimberly said. "Have a glass of water."

"You're both so kind." She sipped the water.

"Would you like us to contact a doctor for you?"

"No, Derry, thank you. It was just a silly faint. Just nerves, I imagine. At all this. And how much depends on me."

"You're not nervous, Ella. We were saying that about you just as you came in. You have no real film-making experience, yet you"re very confident and calm . .." Kimberly was admiring.

"I hope I didn't pretend to have more experience than I do . .." Ella began.

"No, indeed, you've been very open and frank, but you didn't come over as nervous to us," Derry said.

"I was fine yesterday," she said without meaning to.

They looked at each other as if unsure what to say. "And now?"

"And now, if you'll forgive me for collapsing on your floor ... I'll try not to do it again .. . now I'll try to get back to where we were." Ella's eyes were very bright.

"We don't have to ..."

"But we do have to, Derry, or I have to. This is my chance. There will be others who will get their time. Others who won't waste it by fainting on the carpet ... so I must tell you."

"Slowly, Ella, catch your breath," Kimberly laughed gently.

Ella's face was agitated. "No, there's no time for me to go slowly. I've talked to Nick about those release and disclaimer forms you spoke of. He's on top of all that. Apparently they have the same legal standing as here. And I have my notes all here, all ready when you are." She opened her file with shaking hands. She could see them watching as she tried to pull the right piece of paper out. It was protruding from the others but it still wouldn't come out properly. It seemed to take for ever.

Eventually Derry leaned over gently and took it out for her. He placed it on the table. "It's all right, Ella," he said. His voice was very gentle.

So w as Kimberly's voice when she said, "Ella, you've got it, you've convinced us."

"What?" She was confused.

"It's all right," Derry said. "No more pitching, we're going to give you the grant. All we do now is talk about how we make the film."

She looked at them wildly. In the middle of all this terrible nightmare, one thing had turned out as she had hardly dared to hope. "Seriously?" she checked as if they might only be teasing her.

"Very seriously," he said with a smile.

It was the smile that did it. She put her head down on the table and cried until they all thought her heart would break.

Chapter Ten.

Ella could barely remember how she got back to her hotel. She knew Derry and Kimberly stood together smiling at her from the foyer as the yellow cab pulled out into the New York traffic. Somewhere she heard a bell ring. Or a clock strike. It was only ten o"clock in the morning. She got to her room and called Firefly Films.

"How did it go?" She could hear the raw anxiety in Sandy's

voice.

"It's over, Sandy," she said. "It's finished. Would you believe it?"

There was a silence and then she heard Sandy speak to Nick. "Okay, Nick, she did her very best but it didn't work. She says it's over. Nick, she gave it all she could."

Kind, good Sandy, so loyal and supportive. Trying to say something to take the bleak look off the face of the man she loved.

We, Sandy ... no .. . We got it, they're giving it to us. We won, we won the grant."

Ella could hear the gasp and then the phone was handed over. Ts this possible?" Nick's voice was shaking.

"Open up the e-mail in half an hour. They're sending you a confirmation, Nick."

I don't believe you were able to go out and pitch today with everything ... with all you had to cope with. You're a hero, Ella, a bloody hero. How did you do it?"

"Don't ask too much about it. Let's just thank the Lord or someone that it worked out."

"What did you say to them, Ella? Tell us, we want to know every word, every heartbeat."

"You don't want to know."

"But we do. We've been sitting here rigidly for the last hour and a bit . .. now she's going in. Now she's saying this, now that."

"Yes."

"Ella, please, we're only here in a panic, you're there on the spot. You've done it! Tell us!"

"I fainted on the floor first, and then they lifted me back into the chair, and then when I was starting the pitch proper they said we'd got it and I cried for what seemed like an hour but may only have been fifteen minutes

"She's totally unhinged," Nick explained to Sandy. "Probably drunk as well. We're going to get nothing out of her until she calms down." "Brenda?"

"Is that you, Ella? Everything all right?"

"Yes, fine ... I just rang

"I'm so sorry about Don. It must have been a terrible shock to you."

"Yes, it was."

"And of course people who do something as terrible as that don't really know what they're doing

"No, he knew exactly what he was doing, but that's not what I'm ringing about .. ."

"Are you in ... well, where you went?"

"Yes, I'm in New York. It doesn't matter anyone knowing now. He can't send anyone after me. Actually of course he never would have."

"No, of course not," Brenda murmured reassuringly.

"It's just that we've got the funding. We can go ahead with the project now," she said proudly.

Brenda seemed astounded that she could speak of such things. "Well, now. That's wonderful. Well done. And thank God you got it over before you had all this other thing to upset you."

"Well, in fact, I didn't. I did it this morning, just after I heard about Don. I told you I'd call the moment I knew."

"You are remarkable, Ella. That's all I can say."

"No, I'm only hanging in by a thread, if you must know."

"None of us knows what's in people's minds."

"No, I'm okay, because I do know what was in his mind. He loved me. He really did. You know, he wrote me a letter just before he died. Imagine, Brenda!"

"That's ... that's ... extraordinary," Brenda stammered.

"It's amazing," Ella said and hung up. "I think she's having a nervous breakdown," Brenda said in a low voice.

"Well, she's certainly right about the documentary," Patrick replied. "Sandy was in half an hour ago to get me to sign some forms. It's all going ahead."

"But she couldn't suddenly think that guy could have loved her," Brenda said. "She spent over four months getting over him. She can't possibly believe he had a change of heart two minutes before he killed himself. It seems too simple, too easy. And not a word about what happened to Margery and the children, not to mention Ricky Rice."

"I sound more like my old father every day, but it's not over by a long chalk," Patrick said. "Deirdre, she got us the funding," Nick said. "She'd have called you from New York but it's too expensive."

"Proper order," said Deirdre. "If you're going to be tycoons, first step: you must become as tight as ticks with money."

"Very funny. Anyway, she may be home earlier than we thought. There's no need for her to be in hiding any more if the guy is dead."

"If he's dead," Deirdre said. Tim and Barbara Brady got a three-minute call from Ella. "I can't speak long, but the great news is that the movie is up and running."

"Well done, Ella," her mother cried.

Ella's father sat there in his chair. It had not been a good day. The death of Don Richardson had drawn a final line under the hopes that some of his clients might have nourished about ever seeing any of their money again. Several had been in touch with him. They had not been easy conversations. He watched his wife's pleasure as she told him with delight how Ella had managed to make the King Foundation underwrite the project. And now that Don was no longer a threat, she was going to come straight home. Rather than hiding out in New York. "Why aren't you cheerful, Tim? It's wonderful news," Barbara complained.

"It's great news," he said, forcing a smile on his face. Quite a few of the people he had talked to today had expressed the view that Don Richardson might have faked his suicide. By the following morning, the newspapers had begun to express the same doubts. They reprinted stories of those who had folded their clothes, left farewell notes on beaches and had turned up in different countries with different passports years later. But then, the Richardson family was already in a different country at the time of the drowning. There were a lot of things that didn't quite fit together, causing a great deal of vague and uninformed speculation in the various feature articles of the newspapers.

What had happened to his family? The wife, sons and father-in law whom he was meant to adore? They had not come out of hiding to mourn his death. Why had Don Richardson left his wallet and documents to be readily found in a car that he had only rented that morning? What had happened to the missing money? He must have used an alias for the past four months. Were his family still living in this disguise? And if the family still had the embezzled funds, then what did Don Richardson's suicide actually achieve? It hadn't restored any livelihood to those who had lost it.

The press carried on for a few more days. The mystery of the months spent in Spain. The possible lifestyle the Richardsons might have lived on what was once called the Costa del Crime. The whereabouts of the grieving family. As always, Spanish authorities said they were co-operating closely with the Irish law forces to track them down. Efforts to find the family had been intensified among British and Irish expatriates in the area of the drowning tragedy. They had led to nothing. Nobody had ever heard of this family. There had been no trace of any of them since that morning four months ago when they had arrived in Spain using their own passports, and simply never been seen again.

And gradually, as other things happened, the story and speculation about Don Richardson disappeared from the papers. And public opinion began to revert to the thinking that he really had drowned. Brenda noticed from hearing people talk in the restaurant that the pendulum had swung back to where it was before. There had been no sightings of Don back in Dublin. And surely, if he had staged his own suicide, it would have been to get away from the mindless anonymity of being in a Spanish resort, back to where he had been king of everything. To Dublin, where he was a somebody. Don the great risk-taker would have known enough people who would have hidden him. And yet there had not been a whisper. Ella was in control again. She was alert and interested when Derry had introduced her to some of his financial people, the section where Firefly Films would direct their final budgets. She concentrated hard so that she would be able to put a face to each name.

Kimberly suggested she see some films already made on similar themes, and got her in touch with a viewing theatre. It was all very simple, if you had an introduction through the Kings. Ella realised more each day how important they must be and was glad she had not really understood this at the outset.

Most evenings she ate in a restaurant with Derry. He chose all kinds of different places for her, and seemed pleased with her company. He said he hated to eat alone in restaurants and usually wound up with take-out and ate at home, so she was saving him from indigestion. They talked easily. She never asked him why a man so wealthy, so single and obviously very eligible, managed to escape the New York prowling ladies. She told him tales about her childhood, and though she mentioned that they lived in what had been a garden shed next to their old house, she never said why.

Derry told her tales of holidays in Alberta when he was a child; the three children went to their Canadian grandparents for the whole summer. Five years they had done that, it had always been magical. He never said why his mother had not gone with them, and she never asked.

She told him about Deirdre who had been her friend since she was ten and how Nick and Sandy were going to get married. She said she missed teaching, but that she had needed to leave herself free to make money this summer.

He seemed to think that this was a perfectly normal thing to do. He himself had left school at fifteen and had worked in a variety of jobs. When he was twenty, he realised he'd need qualifications if he were to try to give his brothers any kind of start in life. So he got a job as a cleaner/janitor in a college and arranged his hours so that he could do business studies as well. It hadn't been easy, of course, mopping the floors and clearing the litter bins when other kids were going out to ball games or bowling alleys. But then nobody had it easy all the time, and he got a few good night-watchman stints too, which of course made it very easy for him to study. So he had done well in his examinations and won scholarships. And he had got his brothers into college as well.

So Ella didn't ask questions. She told how she would have loved brothers and sisters, but Deirdre had said that they were vastly overrated and that rabbits were a much better idea.

He had laughed. "She sounds like a character, this Deirdre."

"Oh, you'll meet her in Dublin."

Tm not going to Dublin, Ella," he said.

"Sorry, I forgot."

Ella had decided not to push it. And maybe it "would be much better if he didn't come. They would be freer to get on with things.

He very rarely talked about his work as the head of a hugely successful office supplies company, one of the biggest in the United States. He said it was a team effort, that he had been lucky to identify a need at the right time, something that "wouldn't change every few hours as computer software seemed to do. Kimberly had been brilliant on the marketing side, and almost everyone had been there from Day One, so in many ways it ran itself without his having to be there every day. That's what gave him so much time to deal with the Foundation, which was what he really enjoyed.

Yes, of course he had to be ruthless sometimes at work, make decisions that he hated in his heart. When he had to close down a division of his company he made sure the employees were retrained or given early retirement. He was indeed easy company. Kimberly must have met someone very special in Larry if she were able to walk out on Derry King. Every night when she came back from her dinner with Derry King, Ella sat down at the computer and looked up the Irish papers of the day. She read with horror how there had been a thought that Don was not really dead. If only this were true. If only it were possible. She would go to any part of the earth to tell him she loved him. That she understood why he had to do what he had done. But she knew that he was dead. He had written to her to say goodbye.

Then she would read about Margery and the children. And where they could be in hiding. Only Ella knew where they were. In Playa de los Angeles, using her name. Calling themselves Brady.

It was strange to think that she could lift a telephone and give their address to the authorities. But she would never do that. Don deserved better than a girlfriend who would blow everything. He had looked after those who needed to be looked after. His children and their mother and their grandfather.

And Ella. He had sent her those bank drafts, which she could cash and get her father out of trouble. Oh, if only he were alive, even for an afternoon, she would tell him how glad she was that he had loved her after all.

The emptiness of the last four months had been filled by something strange like a curious sense of peace. And eventually the formalities were all done. Ella had booked the Thursday night plane home. "I'm going to miss our suppers," Derry said.

The, too, but you won't come to Ireland and continue them, so what can we do?" she said.

"So if tonight's going to be the last night, then let's make it in my place," he said.

"That would be great." Ella was pleased. She wanted to see his duplex apartment that she had read about long before she met him. Full of paintings by young people. Many of them now valuable since the artists had been on the way up. Some of them by people who had never made it. But Derry King bought what he liked, not what he thought would appreciate in value.

Kimberly too seemed sorry she was leaving and asked her for a last lunch.

"You even get to meet Larry," Kimberly promised. "And that's not given to every looker that comes across my path."

"Oh, I'm not a looker," Ella laughed. She meant it, too. Since she had come to New York she realised how unglamorous she looked, so shabby and ungroomed.

"Oh, you are a looker, Ella Brady," said Kimberly, and she meant it, too. So much so that Larry was only going to join them for a cocktail.

He was handsome with longish dark hair and a designer suit, sunglasses which he took off at once, very assured and confident. Slightly showy, with large gestures, holding Kimberly away from him so that he and everyone could admire her grey silk outfit. Then a long, admiring look at Ella and a light stroke of her long blonde hair.

"Perfect," he said as if he had been asked for an opinion by a judging panel. "Just perfect." And then to the waiter: "Am I not a lucky guy, having cocktails with not one but two beautiful women?"

"Very lucky gentleman," said the Chinese waiter, who had taken in the whole situation at a glance and knew that the lady in grey silk would be the one with the credit card.

Larry spent thirty over-excited minutes with them. He told them about various dramas and screaming matches back at the showrooms. How this buyer had threatened to burn the place down unless she got her order and that designer had said he was leaving for the Islands before he had finished his spring collection.

"Which islands?" Ella asked with interest.

"Oh, who knows, who cares, Ella. He won't go there, it's only a cry for attention," Larry explained.

He asked nothing about Kimberly's morning, which had been spent meeting their advertising agency. He asked nothing about what Ella was doing, with her long blonde hair and Irish accent, in New York. But he was very excited about a reception they were going to later. It was an art exhibition and it was so far uptown they were thinking Albany. But they had to go, and Kimberly must leave time to go home and change, and if she was tempted to eat pasta carbonara for lunch, then she must remember the zipper of the new dress was notoriously sticky and had to be fastened so maybe she might think twice about carbonara!

And he was gone, with a flurry of goodbyes, secure in the knowledge that everyone in the bar saw him go.

"Isn't he something else?" Kimberly said proudly.

Ella struggled to agree.

"Very different from Derry, as you can see," Kimberly said.

"Oh, indeed, yes, totally."

Ella had just been thinking that and wondering what kind of madness had made Kimberly King attracted to Earry. Maybe being a part of the fashion world appealed to her. But to give up Derry King, with his crinkly smile and his ability to understand what you were thinking before you said it... for this guy. A man who looked at himself in mirrors, for God's sake. It was beyond comprehension.

"Earry makes me feel young again, you see." Kimberly answered the question Ella had not asked aloud.

"He's full of excitement, isn't he, and totally gorgeous looking."

Ella hoped there was enough enthusiasm in her voice to match the look of adoration there had been in Kimberly's eyes when she spoke to Larry.

"He certainly keeps me on my toes. I had indeed been thinking of pasta before he reminded me of the new dress." Kimberly gave a little giggle and picked up the menu to choose the salad with no dressing which she ordered instead.

Til have the same," Ella said.

"No, you like your food, have what you like," Kimberly pleaded.

Tm having dinner with Derry tonight. I'll have plenty then," Ella explained.

"Where's he taking you?" Kimberly had a huge interest in good restaurants, although she had rarely eaten three hundred calories worth of food in any of them.

"At his place. I'm looking forward to seeing it."

"Well, be prepared for a two-hour tour of child art first. He's kept all kinds of rubbish as well as the valuable stuff. Oh, and remind him to call the take-out early on. Often he leaves it too late."

"You and he are wonderful together. Kind of jokey, but no bitterness."

"What's to be bitter about? Derry's a great guy. He gave me half of everything. That's how I set up the business with Larry. And he's so practical, he said there was no use trying to hang on to me if I wanted to go. I would have done that for him too, if he had been the one to fall in love with someone else. It's crazy to try and kick life into something that's over."

Ella thought of Margery Rice. Suppose she had thought like that? Would everything have been different? She could have had half of what Don had. More. She would have let him go. Don would not have taken all those risks. He would have been alive today. And he and Ella would have been together. For one moment Ella almost told Kimberly the whole story.

She was a good listener. Her perfect face was alert and interested but not eager. If Ella wanted to talk, she would have had a sympathetic audience. For a moment she was tempted. But then she decided against it. It was her last day in New York. Tomorrow she would go back to Ireland and whatever was going to happen now. All the decisions that had to be made. About the bank drafts in a safe deposit account. About the knowledge of where Don's family lived. It would take a lot of working out. An emotional lunch was not what she needed just now.

Til never be able to thank you both for such solidarity. It was exactly what I needed." She was closing the door very politely.

Kimberly understood. "Sure, well, we were there if you needed us, still are."

I know one thing I did want to talk to you about, if it's not indiscreet. Is Derry really dead-set against going to Ireland? It would be marvellous for us if he came."

"Utterly. His father was a wife-beater and a drunk and an all round bad guy. And Derry simply blames it on his being Irish."

"So it's really deep. I won't try any more."

"I wish you would try. It's exactly what he needs, to go there, to get the monkey off his back or whatever the expression is."

"You think it would help?"

"It might make him normal. That's his problem, you see, these demons he has about Ireland. It was part of our difficulties, part of everything for him. He had to damn a whole country because of his father."

"But why did he choose an Irish project to support?"

"He thought it was going to send the place up, make it all look very foolish."

"But he doesn't now. I explained all that at the first meeting."

"He's honourable enough to go along with something once he's into it, in order to be fair. He wouldn't raise your hopes, get you over here, and then because of his prejudices pull the plug. But you asked why he chose it in the first place, and I told you. He thought it was going to be a hatchet job."

"He seems so calm and in control."

"And he is calm and in control. He looked after his whole family. He raised his brothers, they adore him. He wanted to get his mom a nice home back in Canada where she grew up, couldn't understand that she had lived so long in New York that she is a New Yorker now."

"So she didn't go?" Ella asked.

"No, she had all her friends in the neighbourhood, she even had some happy memories of her husband. Derry couldn't see any of that. His father is his one blind spot. He can't go into an Irish pub, hear Irish music, says they glorify drink and violence. He's never going to change unless he got back there to Ireland and I saw they were all as normal as anyone else. Just getting on with their lives."

"Have you been to Ireland, Kimberly?" Ella asked suddenly.

"Why do you ask?"

"Just the way you said that made me think you had."

"You're right. When we were first having our problems I went there. I even went to see his relations. Perfectly ordinary people. I didn't tell them about Derry, just asked around a bit. He has two cousins who started as house painters, run their own business now. They are so like him in many ways. But he'll never get to know them."

"Did you tell him?"

"Tried to, but no use. Then I met Larry, so I had other things on my mind."

"How long have you and Larry been married?" Ella asked.

"Eighteen months. I hope it lasts." She laughed a very brittle laugh.

"You are very hard on yourself, Kimberly. He adores you. Anyone can see that."

"Aha, I wish I had your faith and optimism."

"Oh, but he does. You saw him. And so does Derry. He looks at you as if he still loves you a lot."

"No, Derry doesn't love me. He's my great friend. He looks out for me. He keeps a quiet eye on some of Larry's worst extravagances. He doesn't think I know. And I care for him too, as a friend. Were you and this Don Richardson friends?"

"What?"

"I know you loved him, but were you friends?"

"No, no, he went away and left me. He wasn't a friend in that sense. But he still loved me, he wrote to me to tell me that the night before ... the night before it happened."

Kimberly looked as if she were struggling to find something to say. Ella rescued her. "It's all right. Everything changed then. I can do anything now that I know he really loved me."

"I can see by your face that's true," Kimberly said truthfully. Ella's face did look serene and calm. Whatever this guy had said to her, she believed it and it was doing her good. The tour of the artwork was leisurely. They walked, glass of wine in hand, while Derry King explained about the young people and their sense of vision. Some of the artists were from inner-city schemes, where their brothers and neighbours were mainly into gangs and drugs, yet they saw beauty in everyday life.

And Derry King didn't send out for a take-away, either. Instead, he took Ella into his state-of-the-art kitchen and said he was going to make a stir-fry in a wok. He had asked the butcher to cut up the meat into tiny strips, the vegetables were chopped and prepared too. "It's probably not so much making it, more assembling it," he said apologetically.

"Oh, no. I'd definitely consider it was making it," Ella reassured him. "You went to the butcher's yourself, and you don't have a fleet of staff serving it."

"Did you expect that?" Derry still had the habit she had noticed the first time she met him of asking simple, direct questions that made you reveal much more about yourself than you intended to.

"Well, I suppose I know you're very wealthy. This is an extremely classy building. I suppose I thought people opening your door for you and cooking your meals might go with the territory," she admitted.

"Is that what you'd have?"

"No! I'd hate it. If I had a place like this, I'd well look after it on my own, no matter how much money I earned." She stared around it admiringly.

"I do have a team that comes in three times a week when I'm not here. They clean and iron, and I have to admit that today I called them and asked them to do the vegetables. Was that cheating?" He had a very infectious smile.

"I bet they're mad about you," she teased.

"Oh, I doubt it. One more job in a long day of hauling cleaning stuff around Manhattan."

"You're probably their only client who has that much sympathy for them."

"I have admiration for them too. They saw a niche in the market and went for it."

"Did you find them, or did Kimberly?"

I did. Kim liked to have someone live in. It was a different kind of life, kind of place entirely."

"So you and she didn't live here then?"

"Lord, no. Kim thinks this isn't a home. She thinks it's a school project room. No, her place, and indeed our place when we were together, was a matter of one drawing room opening into another - perfect for entertaining. I don't do much of that ... as you can so all this suits me better."

And then it was as if he had very politely pulled down a shutter. It was as if he were saying, This is as far as you are going to go today, Ella Brady, no more personal questions ...

She took the message on board. She told him about her plans for the next day. She had a small sum of money kept aside to buy gifts if her mission had been successful, and now it was, so she would go shopping.

"Women love that," he said, almost wistfully. "I can't get a kick out of it myself, clothes are just to keep you warm and decent."

"Oh, I won't be shopping for clothes. I'm talking about trinkets. You know the kind of thing ... joke clapper board for Nick and Sandy to show they're really in the big time now, some big paper sunflowers for my mother, a football hat for my father, a frilly nightie for Deirdre, a book of table decorations for Thanksgiving for Brenda and Patrick in Quentins. Oh, I've got another dog collar for Simon and Maud, like the one I gave you that horrified you so much."

"It did not horrify me. It touched me to the heart," he protested.

"Now, Derry, I want to leave this country while still continuing to respect your honesty," Ella laughed.

"Then look at this." He opened his wallet and took out a Polaroid of a lopsided puppy with a hopeless grin wearing the twinkling, bejewelled collar.

"You actually did put it on an animal! Aren't you just marvellous!" she cried.

"That's not an animal, that's no ordinary dog. I'll have you know you're looking at Fennel."

"Well doesn't Fennel look just fine in his new collar!"

"He loves it, apparently. They tell me at the kennels he won't have it taken off. He pines until they put it back on. Maybe you know more about dogs than I do."

"He lives at a kennel?"

"He has to live somewhere. He can't live here. He followed me home one night. I couldn't leave him."

"Maybe he belongs to somebody."

"Fennel never belonged to anybody. He was born in some alley. His mother may have been killed. He lived by his wits until he found me. He's a survivor, Fennel. He found one of the few men in New York who would look him in the eye and then pay for him to live in luxury for the rest of his life. I take him for walks in the park. We get some very odd looks, thanks to that collar ... but what do I know? Maybe the other dogs are drop-dead envious."

"You're a very kind man, Derry King," Ella said.

"And you're a kind girl, Ella Brady, going off to stores getting gifts for all your friends when your heart is broken," he said.

Then everything changed a little, as if they had been old friends for ever.

She helped him to make the salad and told him about Don quite calmly, from the very first day she had met him, right down to the letter that had been delivered to her parents" house.

He asked questions that never seemed intrusive, but which carried the story along. "Did he seem sad when you were in Spain together?"

"Yes, he did, sometimes. I didn't realise that it was "worry because he was preparing a hiding place. I thought it was because he wanted it to go on for ever ... the two of us there."

"Perhaps it was that," Derry suggested.

And then, later, she was telling him about the numbing shock of reading in the newspapers that he had left people without their life savings. Story after story unfolding of loss and deceit.

"What was the very worst bit?" Derry asked.

"At the start, the worst bit was the papers talking about him and his wife, this close couple which I knew they were not. That hurt a lot. But the very worst bit was my father trying to be brave. My poor, decent, hard-working father, who would never cheat anyone in his life, ending his career in disgrace because my boyfriend gave him some false leads. It was bad enough for him to know that I was having an affair with a married man, that alone was enough to upset him and my mother. But the other. That was unbearable. I literally could not bear to think about it, which was why Nick and everyone got me involved in this project, so that I wouldn't have to think any more."

"And look what you did with it!" He was admiring.

"Ah, that was due to everyone else, and now finally to you helping me. But what thanks do you get? A dog collar for Fennel. And here I am, sitting blubbing away about it, hour after hour."

"No, you're not. In fact, you're remarkably calm."

I am because he loved me. I know that now. For some months I thought that maybe I had only imagined it. Invented the whole thing for myself."

"But he's dead, Ella. You'll never see him again. Isn't that very bleak for you?"

"It's a waste, a desperate waste. But it's what happened and we have to get on with life."

"And when you get back

Til be so busy with the Quentins project, I promise .. ." she smiled at him.

"No, I don't mean that. You will have four major decisions to make about all this and quite soon."

"Four decisions?" She was surprised that he was so precise.

"One . . . whether you'll cash the bank drafts for your father. Two .. . whether you'll hand over the laptop to the authorities. Three ... if you do give it over, "will you erase the information about where his wife and family live? Four ... if you don't hand it over, what will you do with it, throw it away or hang on to it?"

"No wonder you did well in business, Derry. You have a very sharp mind. You can get down to the bones of something in seconds."

"Yes, but those are, as you say, just the bones. You have many other things to think about. It seems that you have good friends. They'll help you."

"I'll keep you informed, Derry."

"You don't need to. There's something sacred about confidences, part of that is you need never follow up unless you want to."

"That's true, but part of a confidence, if it is to be sacred, means that the listener must give as well as the talker."

"What do you mean?"

"I've told you my whole heart and life story," she said.

"You know mine." He tried to be light.

I don't, really. What is so terrible out there that you can't face visiting the country where your father was born? He's dead and as you said to me about Don, you'll never see him again."

"We're not talking the same planet here, Ella."

"I know it's not bleak for you and a waste, like it is for me. For you it's probably a good thing, because you can only hate him and what he did in retrospect. But he had to be born somewhere, and he happened to be born in my country, and that, whether you like it or not, makes you part-Irish."

"You don't understand."

"Well, tell me then."

And slowly he told her. The life of disappointment that this big square man had lived. The blame that he sent in every direction. Towards his native country for not giving him a living back in the early 1960s. To his new country for not giving him streets paved with gold as he had been led to expect. Towards his gentle, hardworking Canadian wife because she looked wistfully backwards to the peace and tranquillity of her country home. Towards his three sons who were never good enough for him, and then too good for him. Derry told the stories of the beatings and how his mother would neither leave him nor report him. His mother believed that if you said "for better or worse", then it was easy to stay when it was better, the only testing ground was when it was worse. And that was when you really did have to stay.

His face was sad and twisted when he spoke of her. "She preferred to stay in that run-down place, that place where he disappeared for days, where he had burned her with a saucepan of hot soup."

"Maybe she was just afraid to go back to her own small town in Canada."

"She'd have had nothing to fear there. She would have had peace, respect, roots .. . far away from all he had put her through."

It was clear to Ella that this woman must have had some happy times with her husband. It had not all been misery. There must have been times of hope .. . hope that they would turn a corner. She wished that she had Derry's clear mind, that somehow she could reduce it all to four main points. But it was more complicated than that. It was a lifetime of hatred and regret.

"So I have no wish to set foot in Jim Kennedy's birthplace and see all the great sights he talked about when he was drunk."

"Jim Kennedy?" she asked.

"My father. You don't think I kept his name, do you? He gave me nothing else. Why should I take his name? I changed it when I was old enough. And amazingly you are old enough to change your name quite early in life. I've called myself Derry King since I was fifteen. Since the day I went out to work." "We were asking Ella what you'd call the baby when it gets born," Maud said to Cathy Scarlet.

"Were you, now? And did she know?" Cathy smiled.

"She said we were trying to get her mind off all the equations," Simon said.

"And was she right?"

"Sort of, but we were wondering. We've thought of some great names ourselves."

Tm sure you have, but it's an oddly personal thing, Simon. Tom and I will think nearer the time."

"You'd want to think soon," Maud said reprovingly. "You never know the day or the hour."

"Well, we know vaguely the day and the hour, and it's not for another two months," Cathy said. "But the day and the hour that Ella is coming here again for a lesson is in two days" time, so I hope you've done all those problems she left you."

"Her head got mended very quickly," Simon grumbled.

"I don't think it was broken at all, to tell you the truth," Maud agreed with him.

Cathy wondered whether to tell them to go easy on her when she came back. The girl had had terrible news while she was away. But that wasn't the kind of information anyone would ever put in Maud and Simon's direction. Ella would be worse off if the twins had been warned to treat her gently. Ella's mother couldn't sleep. And she couldn't talk to Tim about it, either. Only the three of them knew the contents of the letter. Ella had said nothing on the telephone about Don's offer to give back what he had taken. Tim said he couldn't take those bank drafts to clear up his own and his clients" debts. It wouldn't be fair. There were too many other demands on the assets of Rice and Richardson. But if Ella cashed them and gave him the money, then he would have to take it. Barbara Brady prayed that she would manage to keep out of it, as her husband had pleaded that she should. It was just so hard looking at his frailty and realising that it was in Ella's power to sort all that out. "I wish he'd come over with her, could you credit him having an allergy to coming near the place," Nick complained.

"Ella says she has pages of notes," Sandy consoled him.

"And the whole thing about your man has died down," Nick said thoughtfully.

"He was never my man, thank God," Sandy said. They sat easily together in the huge apartment, looking out at the lights of New York. Their conversation was as intense as either of them had ever known, yet there were no tears or signs of upset. At no stage did they reach out to console each other. At no stage did they feel they had to backtrack on what they said, explain or apologise.

"I got us green figs as dessert .. . "would you like those?" Derry said.

"Love them, thank you," Ella said.

They had drunk very little wine. She noticed that he rarely had more than one glass throughout an evening. The reaction to his father must have been very deep-seated.

"Cream with them?" he called from the kitchen.

"Please."

She thought suddenly of Kimberly's handsome Larry telling her not to eat a fattening pasta. Possibly Derry had never served figs and cream to his beautiful wife. She wondered, had he been able to talk to her like they had talked together tonight? But she could ask him anything.

"Did Kimberly help you over any of this?"

"Immensely," he said. "You can see how good she is with people, and how smart. She said it was holding me back as a person, and she's right, of course. She even went to Ireland to find my roots for me, but I handed them back to her. I prefer the hate, you see. I don't want Jim Kennedy to be an ordinary, decent man who took to the hard stuff. I did all I did, and denied myself so much, just because he was a monster."

She listened to him and was silent for a moment. I see - you don't want him to be normal, with normal relatives who work hard like you do. You don't want him to have an ordinary background. You want him to have come straight out of the pit of hell, all steaming and hissing."

"Something like that," he agreed ruefully.

They finished the figs.

"It's really your story we should be telling in a movie, isn't it," she said with a smile.

"Oh, no, they don't make movies like that. They make them where the son goes home and everyone loves him and drinks themselves senseless and dance s jigs. Then the guy goes to his father's birthplace and weeps and begs his dead father to forgive him for not talking to him more. That's what would sell."

I wish you were coming back to Dublin tomorrow with me, in many ways. Not for you but for me," Ella said suddenly.

"You do? Why do you say that?" He was gentle as he always was, interested but not invasive.

"It's funny. I've only known you for just over a week, and yet I feel very safe talking to you. When I step off the plane in Ireland, I'm back in a land where anything could happen, anything did happen. I have to go to a city where I know Don Richardson will never walk or breathe again. That's hard. All these decisions you identified ... I have to make them but I may do it all wrong. It would be much easier if you were there. That's all I'm saying, I suppose."

"Very well," he said.

"What?"

Til come with you," Derry King said simply.

"You can't, not just like that?"

"But you just asked me to." He seemed surprised.

"Yes, but why?"

"If you have to face all that and get through it, then surely I can face a few old memories," he said.

And he took away the plate that had held her figs and cream before it fell on the floor.

Chapter Eleven.

It had never occurred to Ella that Derry King's office would have booked him first class to Dublin and neither of them discovered this until they were at Kennedy airport in New York. "Dumb of them not to check," he said, and went to change.

"No, please, you must have your comfortable seat," Ella begged him. It was quite bad enough that he was coming to Ireland on a whim without him turning up with backache and stiff legs from travelling at the back of the bus.

But he wouldn't hear of it. "It's only a few short hours. It would be highly antisocial and, alas, first class is full, or we'd upgrade you," he said.

Ella began to panic. What would she talk to him about for six hours, knowing all the time that he could have stretched his legs out in comfort and watched a movie of his choice?

They heard the over-hearty laughter of a group on the other side of the departure lounge. They were rather red-faced and might have had a couple of cocktails to speed them on their trip. Ella listened to them carefully and then identified American, rather than Irish, accents.

"Yours, I think," she said to Derry.

"What do you mean?"

"You have me so sensitive and quivering now about the Irish being loud and drunk that I'm very relieved to say that those people over there aren't my lot, they're actually yours."

"Oh dear, that's a pity. I thought that we might keep score and tick them off," he mocked her.

He was easy company on the plane as he had been everywhere else. Talking some of the time, reading a magazine or even sleeping a little. When the trolley passed along the aisle selling duty-free goods, the stewardess asked, "Do you want to wake your husband in case he wants to make any purchases?"

Ella didn't correct her about the relationship. "No, he doesn't want any, nor do I, thank you."

She would have bought Deirdre a bottle of duty-free gin, under normal circumstances. But these were far from normal times.

Why had she said she would like him to come to Dublin? Now she had to look after him, make sure he liked the place. Confirm that he had done the right thing in lending the Foundation's name and support to this venture. She had to draw him into her life, introduce him to her friends and family. Yes, it would certainly take her mind off Dublin now being a city without Don, but she wanted some time on her own to think about that too. Time to mourn him, without having to plunge into all this. And to decide what to do.

But to be fair, he hadn't asked her to make any arrangements for him. His office had booked his hotel, and a limousine would meet them at the airport. He said that he realised she would have to get back to work. He knew she would not be free to dine with him every night because she would possibly be working in the very restaurants where he might want to go and eat. In Quentins itself, and in Colm's restaurant up in Tara Road. It would be very different from the life of a lady that she had been leading in New York.

She looked at him as he slept. This was a man who had worked all his life. He would understand she had a living to earn.

She fell asleep herself. And dreamed a troubled dream, where Don Richardson was waiting for her at the airport, saying that he had come back from the next world for twenty-four hours to give her a message, but he had now forgotten what it was. In her dream, Ella had clutched the computer harder and harder.

She woke just before they were making their approach to Dublin in the pink Irish dawn. She heard the stewardess asking Derry King to make sure his "wife's seatbelt was fastened, and he had not bothered to correct the relationship either.

She realised that there would be no Don at the airport or anywhere ever again. She bit her lip to hide what she feared might be a look of upset on her face. If he noticed, Derry said nothing. He just looked out of the window at all the green. It was hard to read his expression.

Then the plane landed, and there was no time to discuss anything. She had never come into the city any way except the bus. It was curious to see the road from the back of a big black Mercedes. The chauffeur asked Derry which route he should take. Ella began to protest that she should be dropped at Derry's hotel in St Stephen's Green, and that then she would find her own way home from there.

Derry took no notice. "Tara Road first, please," he said simply, and there had been no argument.

Neither of them commented on the city that they were both looking at with new eyes. Ella was glad to see that the weather was good. It was a crisp, late-autumn day. The early-morning rush hour had not yet begun. The streets looked as if they had been cleaned by a recent shower of rain.

He could not find this place repulsive at first glance. He had to see it as a gracious city.

Derry was pleased to see some colour return to her face. She had looked very pale as they had landed. It was a series of hard things for a girl to have had to face over a period of four months. The loss of the man she considered her true love, the financial ruin of her family. And then the second loss of the suicide. Not easy for her to come back, but at least she had friends in this place. She would survive.

i They made arrangements for her to pick him up at his hotel that night for an early dinner.

"This is a beautiful street," he said when they came to Tara Road.

"Yes, but I'm round at the tradesmen's entrance these days," she said with a bright little smile.

"Not for ever, Ella," he consoled her.

"Well," she shrugged.

"Shall I take the car up the lane, Madam?" the chauffeur enquired.

"No, it would get stuck, I'm afraid. Just leave me at the corner, if you don't mind."

The chauffeur was about to carry her case but she wouldn't hear of it.

"See you tonight at six, Derry." She ran off before anyone could say more, down the narrow lane behind the big houses of Tara Road to where her parents would be waiting, up already for hours, and peering out the windows of what used to be the garden shed. Ella couldn't sleep. She tried, but it didn't work. Her mother had gone to work, her father sat at the kitchen table moving papers around him. The huge, paper sunflowers looked cheerful in the window as she had known they would. She looked across at the house where her parents had lived since their marriage until this summer. She remembered Derry King saying that this situation would not be for ever. Maybe a man thought differently, in that he would work and scheme and slave to get it all back. While Ella would lose it all and more on top of it if she only thought she could see Don just once more. She wished she could sleep because she felt a great weariness and sense that life was going to be so empty from now on, it didn't really matter what happened. In his hotel room, Derry King paced up and down. He had a stiff neck from the plane journey. His eyes felt heavy. In theory, he should be able to sleep. In the past, when he had criss-crossed the United States to go to conventions, meetings, sales conferences, his ability to snatch sleep had been legendary. He would wake refreshed and ready for everything.

But it was different here. These were the streets that Jim Kennedy had walked when he was young. This was the land that had not given him a living or an understanding, the city he had fled to find a better and brighter life. Jim Kennedy would not have been welcome in a hotel of this calibre. He would not have been allowed past the door. But those small bars they had passed on the journey from the airport, places with family names over the door, that would have been his territory. And in the telephone directory there were people who could tell Derry about it all.

But he didn't want to ask and learn. He didn't know what he wanted to do. For years he had steeled himself against useless regrets and time wasting, wishing himself elsewhere. There had been too much maudlin "if only" in his father's conversations. Derry King would be no part of it. He would spend no time wondering why he had decided to come to this place. Nor wishing that he had stayed where he was and taken Fennel for a three-hour walk every day in Central Park. He was here now and he would make the best of it. And if sleep would not come, then he must go out and walk in that park across from his hotel. Brenda Brennan's friend Nora was working in the kitchen. She knew that the American was in town. The one who would provide the money to make the film about Quentins.

"Will he sneak in to have a look at the place, do you think?" Signora asked as she expertly cleaned and diced vegetables that Blouse Brennan produced triumphantly in ever-more earth covered trays.

"No, I think he's too smart for that," Brenda said thoughtfully. "He'll have to meet us sooner or later, so he doesn't want to be unmasked as someone having a private peek."

"That's true, but I bet he has a private peek through the window sometime today, don't you?" Signora said.

"Oh, definitely," Brenda laughed.

Patrick Brennan looked at them. Women's friendships were amazing. Brenda and Nora O'Donoghue had been so close since they had all met at catering college. Even the years Nora had spent in Sicily didn't seem to have broken it, they wrote each other long letters all that time. It didn't matter that one of them ran the restaurant and the other was scraping vegetables in it. They were still equals. Still like girls, giggling over whether a rich American would come and peek in the window. Patrick wished that men had friendships like that, where there were no secrets, where nothing was hidden. "Would he be the kind of fellow that would fall for me, do you think?" Deirdre asked in the cafe at lunchtime.

Ella had begged her to have a quick lunch and they were having a sandwich near Deirdre's work.

"No, I don't think he would. He's too interested in work, more work and art and brooding and more work and homeless dogs to have any time for you," Ella said.

"Hey, I could be interested in all those things too if I wanted to," Deirdre protested.

"Well, your powers are extraordinary, Dee. We all know that... and what do I know? When you meet him, you might start to sing arias at each other."

"And will I meet him?"

"Of course you will. I'm just trying to work out where. It can't be Quentins. That has to be formal and work and everything ... we haven't room to swing a cat at our home these days, otherwise I'd have a Sunday lunch for him to meet my friends ..."

"I could have a Sunday lunch in my place if you like," Deirdre offered.

"Would you, Dee? And we could ask Nick and Sandy." Ella was pleased.

"Your parents could come, and Tom and Cathy," Deirdre said.

"Oh, Dee, what would I do without you?"

"Nuala is back in town, but I think not, don't you?" Deirdre said.

"I think very much not." Ella was reflective.

"Sorry for bringing her up," Deirdre said. "But you might just run into her or Frank of the one-track mind."

"Now that Don's dead, do you think he'll shut up about it all, and let him rest in peace?"

"Are you asking me for an honest answer?"

"Of course I am."

"Then I don't think that people like Frank and his brothers would let anyone rest in peace while they think that someone owes them a sum of money."

"Oh well, welcome back to the real world, Ella," she told herself ruefully.

"You never left the real world, Ella! You're terrific to cope with all that's being fired at you. Truly you are."

"No, you're right, I'll survive."

I'm only babbling on because I honestly don't have the words to tell you face to face how sorry I am about what Don did. It's a nightmare for you, and I just want you to understand that I know this." Deirdre's eyes were full of tears.

"Let's think of what we'll eat on Sunday," Ella said. She could cope with anything but sympathy just now. Tom and Cathy were delighted with the invitation to lunch. Something they didn't have to cook and serve themselves. It was heaven. But there was a problem which they had to work around.

"Deirdre, we'd just love to come to lunch, and we'll bring you a really luscious dessert from the freezer," Tom offered.

"You don't need to do that. I'd love it, but you don't need to . . ."

"We do."

"Why?" Deirdre was suspicious.

"Because we're going to ask you if we can bring the twins. We"re meant to be looking after them that day. Muttie and Lizzie are going on an outing. We said we'd take the kids. They're so mad and awful really we thought if we gave you a roulade and a pavlova it might sort of make up."

"How mad and awful?" Deirdre asked.

"Just desperately curious and inquisitive, really. They ask all kinds of intimate questions without realising it. They might offer to dance, but we can close them down on that."

"No, we might need it if it's all a bit sticky. Ella says they"re great value. Of course they can come and I get two puddings as well." Deirdre sounded well pleased.

"What's the worst Maud and Simon could say to this rich American guy, do you think?" Cathy asked Tom.

"They're very into mating conversations just now. They could ask him about his sexual habits, I suppose," Tom suggested.

"Oh, yes, they'll definitely want to know about who he mates with. I was wondering if they want parts in the film or anything, you know how much they like to belong," said Cathy.

"I'm sure he'll be able to deal with them." Tom hoped he sounded more certain than he felt. Ella called in to Firefly Films. They weren't expecting her. They hadn't their response ready.

"It's all so unfair, Ella," Sandy began.

"People put too much pressure on him," said Nick, who used to say that there was no pit of hell deep enough for Don Richardson.

"Yes, when Derry King's gone back to New York, I'll cry on your shoulder, believe me I will, but now we have to work out how to make the best of his sudden decision to come here. I'm meeting him tonight to go over our notes."

She saw their faces lighten. This was exactly what they had hoped for, but they didn't want to appear crass by not acknowledging that the love of her life had first left her and then killed himself. They sat down to plan the campaign.

Nick and Sandy looked at her with admiration as she pushed the hair out of her eyes. She took out an armful of files, some with coloured stickers on them. "There are so many different ways we could go. In a way it will depend on who talks best. But come on, let's have a look at the stories anyway."

Derek Barry was entertaining a couple of wealthy clients to lunch. He didn't actually know them. But Bob O'Neill, his partner, had been most insistent.

They put plenty of work through the books of Barry and O'Neill Accountants, and they were threatening to move elsewhere.

All they needed was some stroking and patting and reassurance. Bob had intended to take them himself, but his plane was delayed in London and he couldn't get back. Derek must hold the fort.

There had been hardly any time to check them out. All he knew was their bank balance. That and the fact that Bob O'Neill, the senior partner in the firm, said that it was a Must Do.

So, Derek sighed and booked a table in Quentins.

That was one advantage of being the father of the restaurant's owner. He always got a table there. He arrived early.

"Where can I put you, Mr. Barry?" Brenda Brennan was always outwardly polite, but he felt she didn't like him.

"It doesn't really matter, Brenda. I'm meeting a pair of clients, Bob's, not mine, loads of money, dot-corn millionaires or something. Complete nobodies." He shook his head disapprovingly.

"Well, I hope they'll enjoy their lunch, Mr. Barry."

She was too cool. He didn't like it. She was, after all, an employee of his son Quentin, and so was her husband, that fancy chef Patrick. Derek Barry, small and self-important, sat down at his table, bristling with a sense that he wasn't being treated with enough respect.

The couple were shown to his table. In their late thirties, he decided, big, both of them, far from elegant, cheap, ill-fitting clothes. The woman carried a shabby handbag, the man wore a loud jacket. They looked out of place in this quiet, smart restaurant, decorated for Christmas, but not garishly so. Little Christmas trees with small white lights dotted around.

Still, Bob O'Neill had been adamant. These two were to get the treatment. They paid big fees for the firm's services. Derek Barry was to make sure that they were happy and continued to be so.

"Mr. and Mrs. Costello, what a pleasure," he said, standing up. I'm Mr. Barry."

"Bob O'Neill's not coming to the dinner?" the woman said, surprised that the table was set only for three.

"Er ... no. Mr. O'Neill sends his best regards but you know the pressure of business ... he was delayed in London. And as one of the senior partners myself, I thought it was time for us to get to know each other." Derek hated her calling lunch "dinner", and in a place like this.

"Well, I'm Jimmy and my wife is Cath," the man said.

"Ah," Derek said.

"What's your first name?" Cath asked.

It "was ignorant rather than impolite, Derek thought, just a woman with no social graces. He wished he had made the time to find out exactly what kind of business they were in.

He told them his name.

"So you drew the short straw, Derek," said Jimmy, settling in and looking at the menu.

Flinching at the way his first name was being used so easily, Derek asked nervously what that meant.

"Well, I suppose it means that Bob O'Neill sent you to this dinner to do his dirty work," Jimmy explained cheerfully.

"Like, so that you'll be blamed when we take our business away from you," Cath added. "Do they serve draught beer here? I'd really love a pint."

Derek Barry felt dizzy. Things were moving out of control. People calling lunch "dinner" and wanting pints in Quentins. These two people talking casually about moving their business away from the firm.

"Well, well, whatever we must be, we must not be hasty," he said. "No haste at all, Derek," Jimmy said good-naturedly. "We'll just come back to the office with you after our dinner and collect the papers."

Derek Barry felt a slow anger begin to burn inside him. Had Bob O'Neill realised how serious the situation with these people was? Probably not. Jimmy and Cath Costello were not the kind of people Bob would have known socially. But he would have known that something was wrong. That was why he had made Derek the fall guy.

Cath was deep in the menu. "Are we all going to have starters?" she asked, almost childlike in her enthusiasm.

"I don't know what any of them are," Jimmy said, examining the list.

They were about to lose wealthy clients, and this woman with her tight perm and her nylon scarf twisted around her neck was proving to be far too confident in a restaurant of this standing.

The waitress said her name was Monica, Mon for short, and she was delighted to help. This one was quails" eggs, tiny little things, in a bed of pastry with a gorgeous sauce served on the side. This one was kidneys with a mustard sauce on toasted scone.

I never had a quail's egg," said Jimmy. "But I'd love kidneys in mustard sauce. I'm in a lather of indecision."

"I'm the same way myself, Jimmy. We'll have two starters, that's what we'll have."

I don't really think ..." Derek began. But he stopped. There was something about Cath's expression that he didn't like. It was as if she could see right through him, could read his embarrassment and snobbish feelings about her earthy way of going on.

"Are you going to have starters and mains?" she asked Derek with interest.

He tried not to shudder and show how little he liked every phrase she uttered. These vulgar people were important to his company. Bob had said only this morning that they couldn't afford to lose their business. So Derek knew he must turn on his charm.

"Before I decide what to eat, why don't you let me get some drinks in, Cath and ... er ... Jimmy, and then you'll tell me what it is you actually do."

"But you know what we do," Cath said simply. "You are our accountants. You must know what we do."

"Well, you see, as you said, it's really Bob O'Neill who deals with you ... very big firm, lots of clients nowadays, many different aspects, the whole problem of expanding .. ." He looked at them helplessly.

"Then why did you ask us to dinner?" Jimmy asked, tearing his bread roll apart as if it were a killer fish which he had to demolish first.

"Bob couldn't make it himself this once. So he asked me to stand in at the last moment

"And you never looked us up?" Jimmy said. "Lord, I wouldn't last one day if I didn't know about the people I was meeting."

Derek looked miserable. Tm sorry, Mr. Costello - I'm sorry, Jimmy. You're right. It was a courtesy and I did not have time. I didn't make time. I apologise. Can you tell me about yourselves? Now?"

"What do you want to know, Derek?" Jimmy asked.

Derek wondered what to ask them. "Do you have children?" he heard himself ask. He wondered why he had said it. Normally he never asked about people's families.

"Do you?" Cath asked in a level voice.

"Yes, just one son. He didn't follow me into the business, as I had hoped he would. I even had a room ready for him, but I'm afraid he didn't take to the accountancy business."

"Imagine!" Cath said. "And did he do all right on his own?"

"Very well. This is his restaurant, as it happens."

"Well, you must be delighted with him," Cath said, her eyes far away.

"And your children?" Derek asked. "Did they go into your business with you?" Again he didn't know why he wanted to know. He was not one for the personal question.

"No, we went into it for them, really," Jimmy said.

There was a silence. Derek knew that he must smile and be charming. Tomorrow he could rail at Bob O'Neill for landing him in all this so very ill-prepared. Today, he had to get these people on his side.

"So? Your actual day-to-day work?" he said, his face nearly splitting with a smile.

"Takes up about sixteen or seventeen hours of the twenty-four," Cath said, in a matter-of-fact way.

"Starting at six in the morning and ending at ten or eleven with a pint before closing time," Jimmy explained.

"But surely you don't need to work that hard?" he said, appalled.

"Oh, we do," Cath said.

"But Bob O'Neill told me that you were very financially secure." Derek was bewildered. "Why do you work so hard?"

"To forget," Cath said simply. "To take our minds off the children."

"The children?" He looked from one to the other.

"Bob didn't tell you?" They couldn't believe it.

"No, he told me nothing." Derek was ashamed.

"We had three children who died in a fire ten years ago. We nearly went mad, but someone told us that if we worked and worked it would make it better."

Derek looked at them wordlessly.

"So we did just that," Jimmy said.

"Hour after hour, year after year," Cath said. It wasn't great, of course, but I think it would be worse if we hadn't. We've no way of knowing, but I think I would have been worse if there had been time to think."

I suppose it gave you a comfortable lifestyle, anyway," Derek said. He didn't know how to sympathise. Better to look on the bright side.

They looked at him, speechless.

"What do you actually do for a living?" Derek asked eventually.

"Fund-raise," Cath said. "Didn't you know? Doesn't Bob tell you anything at all?"

"I'm beginning to think he doesn't," Derek said. "He told me you were very wealthy people."

"Worth a dinner?" Jimmy said. " "Worth a dinner, yes." Derek felt ashamed.

"And you didn't even know that we're leaving your firm?" Cath asked.

"No, not until I met you. No. And of course nothing is definite yet . .."

"He's an odd kind of partner then, Derek," Cath said.

"I don't really know the whole story," Derek blustered a little.

"We went to your firm because you were respectable and well thought of. If we could put your name on the bottom of our notepaper it gave us a bit of standing. People couldn't think we were just two yobbos .. ."

"I'm sure they wouldn't have thought ..." Derek began to protest.

Jimmy interrupted him: "Of course that's what people would say. Two poor, mad yobbos who can't see straight because of their own tragedy. Why should anyone give us money and believe that we'd spend it right? That's why we needed people like you. Or thought we did."

"Oh, but you do ..." Derek began again.

"No, we don't. We realised this. You see, we said to Bob that we thought the fees were a bit steep . . ." Cath said.

"Not that we thought you should work for free or anything, just because our work is for charity .. ." Jimmy said.

"But it turned out that he didn't really care at all about what we were doing. He just looked at a file and said there seemed to be a very healthy profit balance and he didn't know what we were complaining about." Cath was indignant.

"He said there are sort of fixed rates an hour," Jimmy said.

"Which there are, of course," Derek said. "But I imagine we could discuss ..."

"No, that's not it. You see, he didn't even care that we are a charity," Cath said.

"Oh, come come come ... of course he does. Of course the firm realised you were a charitable .. . organisation, but.. ." Derek said with a little laugh.

"You didn't," she said simply.

It was unanswerable.

Brenda Brennan was at their table supervising the serving of a second starter. She also handed Cath an envelope.

"Mrs. Costello, everyone in the kitchen was so impressed when they heard you were both here, they made an immediate collection for your children's fund. Every single person contributed."

"How did they know we were here?" Jimmy wondered.

Tm afraid we recognised you from television. Believe me, Mr. Barry was very discreet about you. Gave us no information at all about you, concealed your identity even." Her eyes were hard and cold.

Derek remembered how he had described his guests. He flushed darkly to think about it.

Jimmy got out a postcard and wrote a thank you note to the people in the kitchen. Cathy took a receipt book out of her big, shabby handbag. They counted the money and sent a receipt to the kitchen staff as well.

Two honest people maddened with grief over lost children, people who had now been ignored and patronised by his own accountancy firm. He longed to reach out and touch them and hold their hands, beg them to tell him what had happened the night their children died. He wanted to take out his chequebook and give them a donation that would stun them. He could have told them that not everyone has it easy. Take Derek's own life, for example. His wife had left him for a few years. She came back remote and distant. His son lived abroad and kept in very little contact. He felt he could talk to these odd people about it, and he would see they got not only vastly reduced fees, but that they also got a sponsorship as well.

These thoughts welled up, but Derek was a man used to thinking long and carefully before he spoke, so he said nothing. And he missed the moment where Cath had seen some softness in his eyes, and where Jimmy had thought for a second or two that Derek might not be a bad old skin.

Instead of speaking with his heart, Derek spoke with his

accountant's mind. And, as the three of them left Quentins to go back to the firm where they would pick up their papers and he would face the wrath of Bob O'Neill, Derek saw people from other tables smile at them and even clasp their hands as the Costellos walked with him. Nobody greeted Derek Barry, partner in the accountancy firm and father of the proprietor of Quentins.

The world had changed, and not for the better.

Laura Lynch was forty when her husband left home. There had been no row. He just said it had been an empty, shallow, one-way relationship. She had not grown or developed within the marriage while he had and bettered himself.

Laura had been so dependent, so lacking in get-up-and-go, so he could no longer stay in something that was making neither of them happy. And he left with a much younger colleague, who had no problem at all in getting up and going. He had been coldly and clinically fair in the division of property, and even given her some unasked for advice.

"If I were you, Laura, I would develop an Independent Streak," he said quite seriously, as if he had not insisted that she be a stay at-home mother for their children.

And in the twenty years since he left, Laura Lynch did indeed develop an independent streak. She needed one since it was hard work, turning what had been the family home into a guest house. The children were fifteen, fourteen and thirteen at the time of the break-up. All of them much more like their father in personality. Independent to a fault, Laura sometimes thought.

It was never a house of hugs and spontaneous gestures. They showed no need for any emotional exchanges or confidences. So Laura learned to be independent. She learned not to be needy and never to allow herself to feel disappointed and let down over things.

She had hoped that she might meet someone and marry again, but it did not look likely. She managed her money well, and once she had sold the guest house to buy a small garden flat, she made a sort of social life with friends of her own choosing. There were bridge lessons, and theatre groups, and creative writing classes. No empty evenings to sit brooding and wondering why she heard so little from the two daughters and son and four grandchildren that she loved so much. She must indeed have been a very dull and dependent woman as her ex-husband had said.

Amazing that she had not resented his cold parting words, but had actually heeded them instead. It was great that Mother had such an independent streak, they told each other. A lot of their friends had the most dreadful problems with clinging mothers, interfering mothers, critical mothers. They were indeed blessed with their own.

The Lynch family often told each other this when they met once a month in Quentins for Saturday lunch. It was a tradition they enjoyed: Harry Lynch and his sisters, Lil and Kate. No spouses, just the three of them, twelve times a year they kept up with each other's lives, unlike many families they knew who just lost touch. Lil looked forward to these Saturdays. She got her hair done and went to the charity shop. Lil's husband, Bob, was careful about money. He said that anyone with a good eye could pick up the most marvellous stylish bargains there. And he was right, Lil said defensively, as she often did. Her sons had Saturday jobs, their father didn't believe in letting young people idle about.

Kate loved the family lunch, too. Weekends were often lonely for her, since Charlie went back to his wife and children for the weekend to keep stability in the family. Charlie was so wonderful to her brother and sister: he admired Lil's crazy 1980s jackets and always asked about Harry's endless garden work.

Harry enjoyed the lunch meeting. He found Lil's Bob rather trying, telling him how to save money on phone calls, and there was something phoney about Kate's Charlie, who appeared to be running two establishments quite cheerfully. Nice to see his two sisters on their own, and tell them about the new pergola and how well the azaleas had done when repotted. He would talk too about Jan and the girls, who always spent Saturdays at the gym and didn't know where Harry had his lunch or even if he had his lunch.

Brenda Brennan wondered how long they had been coming in, these Lynches. Must be nearly fifteen years now, or was it more? From time to time she had seen Kate in here with that Charlie, the man about town who usually brought his wife here for anniversaries or birthdays. Still, people made their own arrangements, Brenda shrugged - as she often did about the way her customers lived their lives. She knew that Lil was married to a man who had a very good job.

Bob often brought big groups to Quentins for very pricey meals. He always checked and sometimes queried the bill. Maybe that's why his wife dressed in other people's cast-offs. Harry Lynch was a dull bank clerk, whose eyes only lit up when he talked to her about growing vegetables. It was fairly easy for Brenda to talk about vegetables, since Quentins prided themselves on their homegrown organic produce. But how did people in the bank react, she wondered. But this was not her business.

Her husband said that she got far too involved in people's lives. "Just serve them, Brenda," Patrick would plead.

But there was no life in that sort of thing, and anyway, part of Quentins" success was due to the fact that she remembered who people were and all about them. She knew that the Lynch family always chose pasta, so she came armed with information about the really good pesto. Contained pine nuts of course, just in case anyone was allergic, but a very distinctive flavour. They would have one glass of house wine each, and Kate would stay on to read her paper and have a second and third glass on her own. There was not much that escaped Brenda.

I see that there's a booking for twelve, under the name of Lynch, for Mother's Day. Is that your family?" Brenda asked brightly. The moment she had asked she regretted it. They were bewildered, looking at each other in surprise.

"Mother's Day. No, that's not us. We usually just give Jan a bunch of flowers from the garden," Harry said.

"My boys wouldn't be able to afford this .. . and Bob, well, he doesn't like big gatherings," Lil said.

"A lot of these Mother's Days and other things are just purely commercial," Kate said with her brow darkening. Charlie's wife would undoubtedly get the full works.

Brenda recovered herself. "You're so right, Kate, it only benefits us and the florists and of course the card manufacturers. Still, we are happy to see it! That's commercialism for you, of course!" She laughed easily and moved back to the kitchen, mopping her brow.

"Sometimes, not all the time, Patrick, but sometimes I think you're right about not getting involved in their lives," she said ruefully.

"What have you said now?" he laughed affectionately.

"I just thought that the Lynches at table nine might have booked to take their mother out for lunch a week from tomorrow, but the thought had never crossed their little minds."

"We don't need any more bookings. We couldn't cope with them. We're full." Patrick was mystified.

"That's not the point. They have a mother, they haven't booked her in anywhere at all."

"Leave it alone, Brenda," Patrick said, shaking a spoon at her. "Do you think she might have meant had we booked for Mother?" Kate asked.

"But we never did anything like that. Mother wouldn't have expected it. Nor wanted it," Harry said. He would have to do a lot of persuading to get Jan and the girls to go along with such a scheme. Sundays were for long healthy walks, not for sitting down and ingesting calories.

"And even if we were to ask Mother out to lunch, it couldn't be a place like this," Kate said. Kate had a particular distaste for those kinds of wives and mothers who wanted a silly expensive fuss made over them, just to reinforce their status.

"And she's so independent," Lil said. "She's always doing something whenever you want to see her."

"Yes, I suppose so," Kate said.

I see her very often," Harry protested. "We have coffee quite a lot, as a matter of fact."

"Only because she goes to the garden centre on late-night opening to meet you there," Kate said.

There was a silence. Harry seemed put out. "At least I do see her, and as Lil said, she has a fiercely independent streak. When do you see her?"

I often ring her and suggest that we go to the cinema on the spur of the moment. Half the time she's doing something else," Kate said. She knew that the others would realise that she only rang her mother on the nights when Charlie was unexpectedly unable to meet her.

"It's a long way for her to get into town to meet you," Lil said.

"So what do you do for her, Lil?" Kate asked, stung.

Lil paused to think. "When we go to the market and get vegetables in bulk, we often drop in. You can only buy things in huge quantities, and this way it works out cheaper for Mother, you know ..." Her voice trailed away.

"She's got loads of friends," Harry said defensively.

"And would hate waste." Lil was very definite on this.

"I suppose she would consider it a waste?" Kate had done the unforgivable. She had introduced some doubt about Mother's independent streak, the one solid pillar that had given them all the freedom to get on with their slightly complicated lives without considering the needs of a sixty-year-old woman, whose husband had left her two decades previously.

Lil and Harry were uncomfortable. Kate was sorry she had spoken. Their pleasant lunch was turning to ashes on them and it was all her fault. Kate needed her brother and sister rather more than they needed her. After all, they had the fairly unsatisfactory Bob and Jan, plus, of course, their children. Kate had nothing but the part-time attention of Charlie.

"Look, why don't I phone and ask her out somewhere? That would cover it."

"We don't want to leave it all to you ..." Lil protested very feebly.

"I mean, perhaps we could ... I mean . .." Harry said very unconvincingly.

"No, honestly, I'll do it. I know that dragon lady, Brenda Brennan, hates mobile phones, but if I whisper, she can't complain." Kate saved the lunch for them.

Mother thanked her and said it was sweet of Kate, but she and a group of friends had already planned to go out that day. But she really did want to thank Kate. So they looked at each other with relief. The day and the ritual of their monthly lunch was secure again. Silly of Kate to have thought Mother, who was independent, might be at a loose end.

Laura Lynch sat very still for a while. This was the first time that any of her children had offered to celebrate Mother's Day or acknowledged it in any form other than a small, dutiful card.

How odd that she hadn't even been tempted to accept Kate's offer. But there wasn't a question of it. She would so much prefer the previous engagement.

As part of her Independent Streak, Laura had created an annual outing. It was called the Chickless Mothers. Women like herself, who did not have loving or demonstrative families. Women for whom there would be no breakfast in bed and huge fuss made. They knew the expression "a motherless chick" - it was in some song. But the opposite held good too. The only rules for the outing were that they enjoy themselves, they did not speak disparagingly of their thoughtless young, nor were they allowed to make defensive speeches excusing them. It had worked very well for the past years, and on each occasion they chose a different restaurant.

This year it would be Quentins.

And the twelve Chickless Mothers would certainly enjoy that. Patrick Brennan was very annoyed when the message came. His routine prostate examination required him to return to the district hospital for some more tests.

Probably nothing at all to worry about, he had been told by the cheerful young woman from the hospital - a woman who was maybe fifteen years younger than him and who would never have to have a prostate examination herself anyway. Easy for her to say there was nothing to worry about.

"It's all your fault for making me have this checkup," he grumbled to Brenda. "One of the busiest weeks in the year, and I have to be out of the restaurant having bits of me poked at and frightening myself to death."

Brenda ignored him. She was consulting her big contacts book. She would find someone who could cover for him in the restaurant. Patrick knew this.

"If I died, you could just look up that book and replace me in six months," he said.

"Why should I wait six months?" Brenda asked, absently. "We'll ask Cathy Scarlet or Tom Feather. One of them will do it for us." Anyone she suggested he would object to, and they both knew it.

"They have their own business to run," Patrick complained. "They can't abandon that and come in to run our kitchens because some fool in the hospital couldn't do proper tests on me first time round."

"We helped them in the past, Patrick, and they'll do it. After all, you're only going to be out for three days."

"That's what they say." Patrick's voice was sepulchral.

"Oh, for God's sake, will you stop upsetting yourself. And me, Patrick. You're going to be fine and those two will be delighted to come in. Either of them could cope with anything."

"Don't tell them what is ... what's wrong with me," Patrick said.

"No, Patrick, I'll just say it's a mystery illness . .. some kind of plague originating in our kitchens. Would that satisfy you?"

He smiled for the first time. And stretched out his hand to her.

"It's just that I "was worried, if you get my drift," he began hesitantly.

She squeezed his hand very hard. "My drift is the same, Patrick my love, but we're both mad to be worried. Instead we should be delighted that we live in such modern medical times." Brenda blew her nose. "Now can I ring these two and get us sorted?" she said, briskly. "You never said yes? Not this week, when we have so much on?" Cathy Scarlet's mouth was a round "O' of horror and amazement.

"What was I to say? The poor guy has to go back for more tests. Obviously he thinks he's for the high jump."

"It's probably just routine."

"Yes, for you and me it looks like routine because it's happening to someone else. Suppose it were us?" Tom Feather's handsome face was upset.

I know." Cathy did know. She would have responded exactly the same way.

"So we do it?" Tom checked.

"Of course we do. I was just having a grumble. But don't forget we have that awful family with their graduation party."

I know, but we can use Quentins" kitchen to do some of that work there. Brenda said we can use the place as our own."

Tom had learned that it was often wiser to tell Cathy the good news and let the bad news creep up on them. So he didn't tell her that Brenda said there was going to be a shellfish banquet organised by a company who were really and truly the People From Hell. That would be faced later. Blouse Brennan drove his brother to the hospital. "Should I say we'll manage fine without, or should I say we'll be lost entirely?" he asked, innocently.

Patrick managed a weak smile. "Say you'll manage fine without me for three days but after that you'd be lost entirely," he suggested.

"I'll make sure the vegetables are top class," Blouse said soothingly.

"This is the week when I wish you grew oysters, scallops, clams and mussels in that garden of yours," Patrick said.

"Molluscs," Blouse said, proudly.

"That's right." Patrick was surprised. His young brother had been a slow learner at school and to this day frequently read instructions on a packet by putting his finger under each word. Imagine him knowing a word like mollusc!

"The very thing, Blouse." Patrick tried to keep the amazement out of his voice.

I'm interested in them. They have no say in anything, did you know that, Paddy? They're just swept along by the tide and stick to rocks. They never make a decision of any kind. Isn't it a queer sort of life?"

"Well, I suppose it is, but no worse than for a lot of sea creatures," Patrick said, mystified.

"Aw, no, Paddy, a crustacean has legs after all, or claws, and a lot of them even have a jointed shell. They've got a load of choices where to go. Not like your poor mollusc."

Patrick Brennan took his small suitcase out of the car and went into the hospital. While he was waiting to check in, he thought about the conversation with Blouse.

He would tell Brenda about it when she came to settle him in for the night. Brenda admired the way Tom and Cathy got down to business and how well they got on with the waiters. Monica, the Australian girl, Yan, the Breton, and Harry, a new boy from Belfast, listened intently as Tom explained how the dishes would be cooked.

"Stay up at the hospital for longer, Brenda," Cathy pleaded. "I can do your front-of-house bit for one night. I've seen you do it often enough. Just go through the bookings with me first and then tell me if there's anything I should know."

From Brenda's face it looked as if she were going to agree.

After all, there was a very solid team already in place. Mon was a great sunny waitress. Nothing could go wrong with her tables.

Yan the handsome Breton boy was charm itself.

Even Harry the newcomer was showing signs of being a reliable lad. He had the huge advantage of realising that he didn't know everything and the ability to ask when in doubt.

But even though she was tempted, Brenda said that Patrick would never get better if he thought there was nobody minding the shop. So she waited until the dinner was well under way before she got her coat and left them to return to Patrick. "Save your strength for the real horrors ahead on Wednesday," she said as she left.

"What real horrors?" Cathy asked Tom when Brenda had gone to the hospital.

"Oh, you know, just the usual Wednesday people," poor Tom stammered.

"Tom. You are the worst liar in the world. Tell me what's happening on Wednesday or else I shall take out both of your eyes with the melon bailer."

He told her about the shellfish banquet for this hated public relations company.

"A seafood buffet?" she asked.

"No, specifically shellfish, the guy said. Not salmon, not smoked salmon, not trout. Unless the thing lives in its shell it doesn't get on our table." Tom tried to make light of it.

"We can't do it," Cathy said, grimly.

"What do you mean? We have to."

"Listen, Tom, I've been doing the fish-buying for the last couple of weeks. The catch is very small. There were practically no prawns, the lobster cost a fortune, and the oysters had all gone to France."

"But they'd have contacts ... I mean, this is Quentins. They wouldn't be Mickey Mouse like us ... they must spend a fortune on fish, for God's sake ..."

"Well, let's pray they do," Cathy said.

"We've a lot of stuff frozen back at the premises. We could give them that."

"We can't. We thawed the lot today for the Demon Graduation Party."

"Oh, God, please, please, nice God, won't you be very good to us and let us lay our hands on some shellfish?" Tom prayed.

"Tell me more about this job on Wednesday," Cathy asked Brenda when Quentins had closed. They sat in the kitchen rubbing their ankles and drinking great mugs of tea.

"Something we should never have taken on. He's the most disgusting man. He fights every bill, upsets the staff ... It has been a bit slow recently, so I thought it would be worthwhile. But I fear we have a few problems."

"Like?" Cathy said, although she knew the problem only too well.

"Like a grave shortage of shellfish. No joy from the usual sources, I'm afraid. I've been on to them all."

"He'll have to take salmon like everyone else. We'll tell him, Brenda, he can't expect someone to do a quick miracle these days. Those times are long gone." Cathy spoke firmly as if to encourage her own flagging spirits.

Brenda looked up. Her face was white and drawn. "I wish you hadn't said that. I was sort of relying on the thought that there might be a few miracles still hovering around." The Tuesday seemed to be ninety hours long for everybody. For Patrick, in hospital, the time crawled. He forced himself not to look at his watch again. They would have to come for him sometime soon.

Back at Scarlet Feather's premises, Tom, busy dressing the lobster for the Graduation Lunch, feared catching sight of the clock in case he would panic at how behind they were. They really needed Cathy today, but she was down at Quentins.

Cathy was purple in the face trying to rescue cream sauce that had unaccountably curdled. Brenda showed the guests to their tables with her usual polite, welcoming smile. Inside she was churning. It was lunchtime - surely the doctors must have seen Patrick by now. And if they had, why hadn't she heard? Her friend among the nurses promised to call as soon as the test results came through. Please, please, may it not be bad news.

Tom phoned when the pressure in Quentins Restaurant was at its height. Sorry, sorry, he knew this was the worst time, but the Graduation Party had hit another low. Could someone, anyone, come over with a big bowl of tomato salad? The Graduate's mother was now losing what remained of her senses and was weeping over something that had never been ordered. Was there a chance? If they only knew what it was like here!

"If you knew what it's like here!" Cathy said. She had the phone clamped against her ear while she mixed more sauce and issued directions to the waiters. Brenda's strained face moved in and out of the dining-room. She didn't need another crisis.

Til send Blouse," Cathy said. "Give him the address, will you, and get off the phone quickly in case the hospital rings." At half-past two, Patrick was told he had the all clear. Could he get back to the restaurant? he asked. Apparently not, still a few formalities to go through. And rest. He must rest. But he could leave tomorrow.

Three minutes later, he was on the phone to Brenda. Cathy handed her a paper towel to wipe the tears from her immaculately made-up face. The staff looked away so as not to catch Mrs. Brennan with her guard down.

"Where's Blouse?" she wanted to know.

"Don't ask," Cathy pleaded. But she wondered where on earth he actually was. It was an hour and a half since he'd left in a taxi. Please may there not have been yet another disaster to drive them mad. Had he found the right house? When she next had two seconds, she would call Tom.

But Tom called first. "Can you talk?"

"Sure. Great news. Patrick's okay. And he'll be back tomorrow."

"Good news here, too . .." Tom began.

"Listen, I'm sorry for interrupting you, but have you any idea where Blouse is?"

"He's here, saving our lives."

"The tomato salad?" she asked, bewildered.

"No, nobody's eating that, like I told them."

"So what's he doing, then?" Nothing would surprise Cathy by this stage.

"There are about fourteen horrific children, monsters all of them. Anyway, they were annoying everyone, breaking things, sulking. Blouse has them all down at the bottom of the garden. He's running a herb competition."

"What?"

"You wouldn't believe it. He has them captivated. They all have little yoghurt pots or cream cartons. And he's talking about lovage and verbena."

"What about the Graduate's mum?"

"Mrs. Dracula is fine. She's my new best friend, as it happens."

"Oh, tell me about it. You turned on the charm. Maybe you could charm some shells out of the rocks for us for tomorrow here?"

"That not sorted yet?"

"No, but we're on the case." From his hospital bed, Patrick Brennan was also on the case. And the news was very bad. Not a prawn or lobster to be found. Patrick rang the PR man.

"Why does it have to be shellfish . .. please, just tell me?"

"It's an image, a concept - the whole idea of sticking fast. We"ve used it in our literature just to attract this client's account. You"re not telling me you're going to go back on the agreed menu . .."

"I'm not telling you anything. What are you advertising?"

"It's no business of yours ..."

"What is meant to be sticking to what? What's the concept about? Can't you tell me? We're doing the bloody presentation for you," Patrick roared.

"All you were asked to do was to provide a shellfish buffet."

"It's in your interest to tell me," Patrick lowered his voice impressively.

The PR man eventually gave in and told him it was a new insurance company that stuck with you through thick and thin.

"In that case you don't need shellfish, you eejit. You need molluscs."

"I need what?"

"Prawns and lobsters don't stick to things, you clown. They walk all over the ocean floor. Your clients would drop you as soon as look at you. What you want is molluscs. Why didn't you tell me before?"

He hung up and called the restaurant. I need Blouse urgently," Patrick begged. He was told he would have to wait in line. "We have to find him quickly, Cathy. Tomorrow we're doing molluscs."

"Doing what?"

"Didn't they teach you anything at that catering college? Molluscs. Single shell, double shell. There's thousands of them out there, stuck to rocks. All we have to do is get them to the table."

"Do you mean things like mussels or whelks or cockles?" Cathy felt dizzy.

"Yes, and everything else ... clams, razor shells, limpets ... Blouse will know where to find them. Where is he, anyway?"

Til get him to call you in the hospital, Patrick," Cathy sighed. The restaurant must be in a poor position if Blouse Brennan was going to be sent off to scrape limpets off rocks.

Tom rang again. "The party's over but the children won't go home. They wouldn't even come up for the group picture with the Graduate. Blouse has them hypnotised, he's like the Pied Piper. I wouldn't be surprised if they followed him back to Quentins."

"Yeah, well ask him to break off just long enough to call his brother in the hospital. Patrick wants him to do the Pied Piper thing along the shore tomorrow to collect limpets."

"Isn't this a totally crazy life?" Tom said, with the tone of a man who would never live any other kind of life.

Cathy felt the same. But with one proviso. She wished mightily that tomorrow night was over. She couldn't see one redeeming feature that would save them. But she had reckoned without Blouse and his newly found self-confidence.

And the next night they all watched, astounded, as the boy they had all considered slow, pointed out, with an elegant cane, the variety of shellfish displayed on what he called the Mollusc Medley. The limpet, the cockle, the whelk and the winkle ... all of them praised for their qualities of constancy. The oyster, the scallop, the mussel likewise. These were loyal invertebrates, Blouse told the group earnestly. Like the insurance company they were here to honour, these magnificent molluscs were noted for their sticking power in a world where, alas, not everything could be relied upon.

Patrick Brennan sighed a very great, long sigh. His early release from the hospital had been justified. The PR man was as delighted as the Graduate's demon mother. The PR company he ran was booking further spectaculars, but only if Blouse could be part of the package.

"He doesn't come cheap, of course," Patrick heard himself saying. His voice sounded weak. It had taken hours to persuade Blouse not to stress the lonely, futile and pathetic lifestyle of the mollusc. He hadn't been sure if Blouse had grasped it until the very last moment. But there were lots of things he wasn't sure of any more. Like how Blouse had found all those children to help him get buckets of those terrible things to the restaurant. They kept coming in all afternoon and all they needed for payment was an ice-cream.

Best not to question good news, Patrick always believed, like the look of love and huge relief in Brenda's eyes as she reached out her hand and stroked his through the most extraordinary - and successful - evening that Quentins had known so far.

When Brenda's great friend Nora had lived all those years in Italy, she had written long, long letters. Always she began with the word "Carissima" ... It sounded a bit fancy, Brenda thought, a little over the top, but Nora had insisted. She spoke Italian, she dreamed Italian now. To say "Dear Brenda" would sound flat and dull.

Carissima .. . dearest . .. was a better way to begin.

And Brenda wrote back faithfully. She charted a changing Ireland for her friend, for Nora who lived in the timeless Sicilian village of Anninziata. Brenda wrote how the waves of emigration were halted, how affluence came gradually to the cities, how the power of the Church seemed to slip away and change into something entirely different.

Brenda wrote that young people from different lands came to find work in Ireland now, girls who found themselves pregnant kept their babies instead of giving them up for adoption, young couples lived together for six months or a year before their marriages.

Things that were unheard of when Brenda and Nora were young.

Nora wrote about her friends in this village. The young couple who rented the pottery shop. Signora Leone. And of course Mario.

Mario, who ran the hotel.

Nora never wrote of Mario's wife Gabriella or their children. But that was all right. Some things were too huge to write about.

Brenda wrote about a lot of things, how she had met this guy they used to call Pillowcase, but was most definitely called Patrick Brennan these days, how they had fallen in love and worked in many restaurants. She told how the good fortune of running Quentins had fallen into their lap and they were rapidly making a great name for themselves. She wrote about the people who came and went, staff, and those like Patrick's brother Blouse, who had stayed and flourished there.

But Brenda only once told the deepest secrets of her soul, their great wish to have children, the long, often humiliating and eventually disappointing road of fertility guidance. That was too hard to write about.

Brenda was very helpful in that she acted as a spy for Nora O'Donoghue by going to see Nora's family. Hard, unforgiving people, who regarded her as a sinner and a fool, someone who had disgraced them by running off after a married man.

They were so uncaring about Nora's life that Brenda urged her friend to forget them. "They have forgotten you unless it suits them," she had written to Sicily. "I beg you, don't listen to any pleas they may have when they are older that you should return and be their nurse."

"Carissima," Nora had written, "I will never leave this place while there is a chance that I can see my Mario. I wish they could share my happiness. But perhaps one day they will be able to."

Nora's Mario died, killed in an accident on the mountain roads which he drove across so fast. The village implied that the Signora Irlandese should now leave and go home.

Brenda would never forget the day Nora had appeared at Quentins, long dress, wild hair, her face mad with grief for the only man she had ever loved. She still called Brenda "Carissima". They were still best friends. The long years apart, well over two decades, had changed nothing between them.

And when Nora found a new love, Aidan, the teacher up in Mountainview School, she and Brenda clutched each other like teenagers. Til dance at your wedding," Brenda promised.

"Hardly, there is the little problem of his first "wife," Nora had giggled.

"Come on, Nora, drag yourself to the present day ... there is divorce since 1995."

I managed for well over twenty years without marriage first time round. I can do it again." Nora wasn't asking for the moon and stars. "You do what you like, but I'm not giving up on it," Brenda threatened. Patrick said that it was amazing they found so much to talk about. He was never jealous of their friendship, but often said that men just didn't have conversations like that about every single aspect of life. "You are the losers," Brenda said. "I agree, that's what I'm saying," Patrick said unexpectedly. Nora went every week to the hospital where her elderly father lived in the geriatric ward. Ram or shine she wheeled him in the grounds. Sometimes he smiled at her and seemed pleased, other times he just stared ahead. She told him about any happy things that she remembered about her childhood. Often these were difficult to dredge up. She didn't tell him about Sicily because already it was fading in her mind like a highly coloured photograph left in bright sunlight. So she told him about Aidan Dunne and Mountainview School and the Italian classes. And she talked pleasantly about her sisters Rita and Helen, and her large!} silent brothers, even though she hardly saw them at all.

The news that she had moved into a bed-sitting-room with a married Latin teacher had horrified them all over again. Really, Nora seemed to be a scourge sent to lash their backs.

Nora called to see her mother every week. Age had not improved her mother's temper or attitude, but Nora was determined to remain calm. Years of practice had given her a skill at being passive. And it was easy to call in for an hour and listen to her mother's list of complaints if she could go back on the bus to good, kind Aidan, who was so different and saw nothing bad in the world. The day of her father's funeral was bleak and wet. Brenda and Patrick came but they decided against letting Aidan take part. He might be like a red rag to a bull. Some of her students from the Italian class came to the church, an odd little group which certainly helped to boost the numbers. "I'd ask you back, but I don't honestly think that my mother would be able to . . .". No, no, they insisted, they had just wanted to pay their respects. That was all. Nora's mother found fault with everything. The priest had been too young, too swift, too impersonal. People hadn't worn dark clothes. The hotel they had gone to for coffee, just the family, had been entirely unsuitable.

She brooked no conversation at all about Father. Did not care to hear that he had been a kind man and that it was good that he was at peace. Instead there was a litany of his mistakes which were apparently legion and the main one was his never having taken out a proper insurance policy.

"And now of course you'll all go off to your own homes and leave me alone for the rest of my days," she said.

Nora waited for the others to speak. One by one they did. They told Mother that she was in fine health, that a woman in her seventies was not old these days. They reminded her that her flat was very convenient for bus stops, shops and the church. They said that they would all come to see her regularly and now that there was no longer a matter of visiting Father, they would take her on different outings.

Their mother sighed as if this was not nearly enough. "You only come once a month," she said.

This was news to Nora. It had always been implied that the visits from her sisters and sisters-in-law were much more frequent. It meant then that she, with her weekly visit, was indeed the best of them all.

She noted it without allowing her face to change.

Rita and Helen were quick to explain. They were so busy and, honestly, others must remember how hard it was with families and running proper homes.

The implication was that Nora had all the time in the world and no responsibilities so should play nursemaid and be glad to do so. Nora, who worked harder than any of them, Nora, the only one of them without a car who did the awkward shopping, and visited four times as often as the others did, always bearing something she had cooked for her mother.

It "was grossly unfair of them to make her of all people feel guilty. And she had promised Brenda Brennan that she would never weaken. But Nora had also promised herself that she would be polite and courteous to the family, she would not return their hostile, bad-mannered attitude.

So she blinked at them all pleasantly as if she hadn't understood the direction of their conversation. She could see it driving them all insane. Still, what the hell, she was not going to lose her dignity on the day of her father's funeral. And after all, she had Aidan to go home to after all this. Aidan, who would make her strong tea, play some lovely arias in the background as they talked, and want to know every heartbeat of the day.

Then tomorrow she would meet Carissima Brenda and tell her the story again.

She looked at her sisters, brothers and their spouses. Not one of them had a fraction of the happiness she had.

This gave Nora great confidence and strength and made it easy to put up with their taunts and very obvious suggestions that she abandon everything and go and look after her mother full-time.

"I'll come round to see you tomorrow," Nora promised as she left. She kissed the cold parchment of her mother's cheek.

Did this woman miss the man they had buried today? Did she look back at times when there was passion and love? Maybe there had never been any passion and love.

She shuddered at the thought. She who had found it twice in one lifetime.

She saw Helen and Rita looking at her oddly. She knew that her sisters often talked about her with their sisters-in-law. It didn't matter very much.

"Will you be round at Mother's tomorrow also?" she asked them pleasantly.

Helen shrugged. "If you're going, Nora, there's not much point in us all crowding in," she said.

"And anyway I'll be there next week," Rita snapped.

But she could still hear them reassuring their mother, "Nora'll be in tomorrow."

"Aren't you going to be fine tomorrow, Nora will do any jobs for you."

"Nora has nothing to do, Mam, she'll do all the shopping for you when she comes to see you."

It would be like this always. But it didn't matter. None of the rest of them had known happiness like Nora had. It was only fair that she should give something back. "Did you end up paying for their coffee and sandwiches yesterday?" Brenda asked her friend Nora.

"Brenda, raw Carissima Brenda, don't you always have the hard word?" Nora laughed.

"That means you did," Brenda cried triumphantly. "Those four kept their hands in their pockets and you, who have no money at all, paid."

"Don't I have plenty of money thanks to good people like you?"

She went on washing and chopping vegetables in Quentins, where she was paid the hourly rate.

"Nora, will you stop and listen to what you're saying? We pay you a pittance here because you insist it will all mount up to take Aidan and yourself to Italy, and then those selfish pigs make you spend your few pounds on their bloody sandwiches. It makes my blood boil."

"Brenda Carissima ... you of all people must not boil. You know they call you the ice maiden, you know you must be cool and calm. To boil would be a great, great mistake."

Brenda laughed. "What am I to do with you? I can't make it up for you which might stop me boiling. You won't take what you call charity."

"Certainly not."

"Well, swear one thing. Now. Swear here and now that you won't listen when they tell you that she needs a full-time carer and that you are it."

"They won't!"

"Swear it, Nora."

I can't. I don't know the future."

"I know the future," said Brenda grimly. "And I'm very sad that you're not going to swear." It happened sooner than even Brenda could have believed. Only weeks after her father's funeral, Nora found herself being told that her mother had failed terribly.

They didn't get in touch with her at home because the little flat she shared with Aidan Dunne was still out-of-bounds territory for her brothers and sisters. Some of the letters were sent to Mountainview School, some care of her mother. Helen directed hers through Quentins Restaurant, which was why Brenda became suspicious.

"Tell me, I demand to know what are they asking you to do now," she begged.

"You are really a very difficult friend, Carissima," Nora laughed as she polished the silver, another little restaurant job she had managed to wangle to help top up the Italy fund.

"No, I'm so helpful and so good for you. Just tell me what they want."

"Mother is walking around in the night. It came on her suddenly. She can't bear being on her own, apparently."

"Your father was in hospital for over three years, she had some time to get used to it."

"She's old and frail, Carissima."

"She's seventy-five and as fit as a flea."

They looked at each other angrily.

"Are we having a fight?" Nora asked.

"No, we couldn't have a fight, you and I. You know all my secrets, where all the bodies are buried," Brenda said ruefully. "But believe me, I tried to persuade you not to run after Mario, and as it turned out I was wrong. You had the life you wanted. However, I'm not wrong this time and that kind of pressure was nothing to what I'm going to put on you now. Before I have to shake it out of you, what have they asked?"

"That I spend some nights in Mother's place," Nora sounded mutinous. "It's not much to ask. I mean . .."

"How many nights?" Brenda's voice was like steel.

"Well, until they get full-time help ..."

"Which they won't ..."

"Oh, they will eventually, Carissima ..."

"Don't Carissima me, Nora. They've asked you to go in every night, haven't they?"

"For a very short time . .."

"And Aidan?"

"He'll understand. I'd want him to do it if it were one of his parents."

"Listen. That man had one class-A bitch of a wife already. Don't let him have a second wife who turns out to be as mad as a fruitcake."

"We owe it, we have so much happiness, and isn't it like a bank? You have to give something out if your account is overflowing."

"No, Nora, that's not the way it works."

"It is for me and for Aidan too. I know it will be."

There was a silence.

Nora spoke again. "It's not that I don't have the guts to refuse them. I do, plenty of guts. I know my mother disapproves of me, and my brothers and sisters do, but that's not the point."

Brenda knew with terrible clarity that this was indeed the point. This family wanted to destroy Nora's happiness.

Nora had spent too many years in the hot sun of Southern Italy. It had affected her judgement, softened her mind. It was going to lose her the love of that good man Aidan Dunne.

"Will you promise me one thing ..." Brenda began.

"I can't make any promises."

"Just do nothing for a week. Say nothing to anyone for one week. It's not long."

"What's the point if I'm going to do it anyway?" "Please. Just to humour me."

"Bene Carissima ... just to humour you, then." Brenda Brennan called a friend who was a matron in a hospital. "Kitty, can I ask you a very small favour? There's a nice bribe of dinner for two in the restaurant."

"Who do I have to assassinate?" Kitty Doyle asked eagerly. "Do you like having me around your flat, Mother?" Nora asked.

"What kind of question is that?"

"I just wondered. You don't smile. You don't laugh -with me."

"What's there to smile and laugh about?"

I tell you little jokes sometimes."

"Ah, don't start going soft in the head, Nora. Really now, on top of everything else."

"On top of what else?"

"You know."

"Can I bring Aidan to meet you, Mother? I've met all his family."

"You haven't met his lawful wedded wife, I'd say."

I have, actually. I met her up at Mountainview School and I met her up at her house. You know, where Aidan used to live. I painted the Italian room so that she could make it into a dining room when she sold the house."

Her mother showed not the slightest interest.

"Would you like me to paint the kitchen here for you, Mother?"

"What for?" her mother asked.

"No, let's leave it," Nora said.

"Your mind is a million miles away, Nora," Aidan said that night. "Is something worrying you?"

"Not really."

"Tell me."

Til tell you in a week," she said.

"There's nothing wrong, Nora? I can't wait a week. Tell me, tell me."

"No, it's no illness or anything. It's just a problem. I promised I'd wait a week. You sometimes wait before you tell me things. Believe me, it's nothing sad," she said, her hand on his arm.

"I love you so much, my beautiful Nora," he said, tears in his eyes. "And I too will have news for you in a week."

"I'm not beautiful. I'm old and mad," Nora said seriously.

"No, you foolish love, you are beautiful," said Aidan, and he meant it. Back in her mother's flat, Nora assessed how much she needed to bring with her. Sheets, a couple of rugs that could be easily stored when they were not in use on the sofa.

She would have to have a sponge bag, a change of shoes and some underwear that she could store in the bathroom cupboard. She must get a stronger electric light bulb. Maybe she could do some embroidery at night when Mother was asleep.

It would be so lonely without Aidan, and he would be lonely too. But there was no point in trying to get him under her mother's roof. The protest was too strong.

Brenda had been to see Nora's mother yesterday.

As always, Mrs. O'Donoghue sighed and said it was such a pity that Nora hadn't turned out like her friend. Properly married, earning a decent living.

"Very selfish, of course, she and her husband not having a family just so that they could get on in their careers."

"Perhaps they tried and the Lord didn't send them any children," said Nora, who knew just how hard they had tried.

Her mother sniffed.

"And I hear Helen was here."

"She hasn't been here for days," Nora's mother said.

Hard to know which of them to believe.

Helen had said she was leaving a letter for Nora on the dresser. Nora read it. The usual stuff about how Mother was failing every day, some accommodation must be reached, the rest of them had proper homes and families ...

There was also another couple of letters. They were about Mother's health. Nora took them down to read. One was a typed letter from a Ms K. Doyle, matron of a large hospital, responding to a request to know about the availability of in-home carers.

Nora's heart soared. She always knew that her sisters must have planned for her mother's care. But it was good to see it proved.

Ms Doyle had offered them several options but suggested first that their mother's health should be properly assessed so that her needs could be established. Then, oddly, there was a photocopy of the letter that Helen must have sent back.

Nora stood there reading. Thank you for your concern. I am at a loss to know exactly who it was that contacted you, possibly my sister Nora who has been abroad a lot and is very unbalanced. She doesn't realise that our mother is a very strong, fit, seventy-five-year old, well able to look after herself. Like all elderly people left on their own, she sometimes suffers from the need for company. But now that Nora has, we think, returned to Ireland permanently, she might well spend overnights with my mother which would get her out of another unsuitable situation and kill many birds with one stone. So there is no question of us needing any help now or in the foreseeable future.

I am sorry that you have been bothered in this regard by my sister, who undoubtedly meant well but who, as you can see, has little grasp of the situation. I am surprised that she asked you to reply to me, but glad that I was able to set you right on this.

Nora has always been a great problem to this family. We don't suggest that she live full-time with our mother as Nora has no social skills and is unable to be a companion for anyone. Still, the night-time company should surely benefit both of them.

Thank you again for your courteous and helpful letter. Nora sat for a long time with the letter in her hand. Surely her sister had not intended her to read it. It must have been sent in error. It must have been. Helen would surely not want her to see what she had written. That Nora was unfit, without social skills, that Mother was fit and strong, needing no caring, that the family was trying to rescue Nora from an unsuitable situation.

But if Helen had not left her this letter on the high shelf of the dresser, then who had?

For a long moment Nora thought about her friend Brenda, dear, dear, Brenda Carissima, who had been so loyal over the decades, and who had asked her to wait a week. Just one week. But even Brenda couldn't have set this up.

This was a real person ... Ms K. Doyle, her name was on the hospital's letterhead. This was Helen's handwriting. Not even wily, cool Brenda could have accomplished this.

Nora went back home to Aidan.

"My week is up, so I'm telling you that I'm going to spend every single night with you until I die," she said.

"This was what was worrying you?" Aidan was puzzled.

"Yes, I thought I might have to spend every night on my mother's sofa."

"We'd have been very uncomfortable on a sofa," he agreed.

"No, you'd have been grand, you'd have been here," Nora said, stroking his face.

"I wouldn't have been at all grand without you," he said softly.

"What was your news for me?" she asked.

I saw Nell about t he divorce. She said fine, but that we're far too old to be getting married at our age, but fine."

"She is right, of course," Nora said thoughtfully.

"She is not right. We will be married, you and I, with all our friends there to celebrate our good luck and happiness," said Aidan with spirit.

"Aidan, you're wonderful but we can't think of it, we haven't any money, and I've been saving for it all the time."

"But I'll have the money."

"How can you save, Aidan?"

"Well, this man Richardson, whose kids I teach. He's a big financial adviser and he told me what to do with my money. In fact, I don't take my fee at all from him. Now each week he invests it for me and it's well over doubled. Imagine that." "Imagine!" She looked at him with great love.

"And now about you. Was this big decision about your mother's sofa easy to make?"

In the end it took about ten seconds," Nora said. I have to tell just one more person, Carissima."

"Will she be surprised?"

"You have no idea with Brenda Brennan," Nora said. "She'll be pleased, but I will go to my grave wondering whether or not she's surprised."

"Why did you call the place Quentins?" Mon asked one morning at coffee break.

"That's his name, the guy who owns it." Brenda was surprised that the young Australian girl didn't know this. She was so bright, so quick.

"I thought you two owned it." Mon "was very confused. "You mean, you could be given the push, just like me?"

"Oh, very unlike you," Brenda laughed. "He knows we are reliable. You're still proving it."

"Does he know about me?" Mon wanted to be part of the team.

"Not too much detail, but yes, he would know that we hired you and we're pleased. Now is that all right?"

"Does he ever come over and see the place?"

"No, hardly ever, once he got us in to run it. Sometimes he sends friends and then lets us know that they thought it was all going fine."

"He must trust you utterly."

"Well, we send him the accounts regularly, but you know, I think he hardly reads them," Brenda said wonderingly. "And I haven't heard from him in a long time. I think I'll send him a cheery message if there's time today."

"What makes you think there's going to be time today? There never is any other day." Mon rinsed her coffee cup and went out to check the faultless dining tables in Quentins Restaurant.

By chance, Quentin's father came in to lunch that day. He had now retired from the accountancy practice where he had always hoped that his son would succeed him. Distanced and confused by the boy's wish to go abroad and paint, he was grimly pleased that the dream of being a great artist had somehow eluded his son.

"Do you hear any news from Morocco?" Brenda asked quietly as she settled the older man at his table.

"You'd hear more than I do," Quentin's father grunted.

"Absolutely not. He's the employer you dream of. Not a word except a raise at Christmas, no wonder we get arrogant, Patrick and I, and think we own it ourselves."

"By rights you should own it. Didn't the pair of you make it what it is?"

"No, your son had the dream, the idea. We just helped him carry it out."

Brenda and Patrick never would have been able to raise the capital to buy the place, but it didn't matter. As long as Quentin lived his peaceful life in the hills of Morocco and let them at it, they had no worries. Sometimes they wondered what would happen if Quentin should die suddenly. Still, every day they worked there, their reputation increased. Brenda and Patrick Brennan would not be long unemployed in Dublin.

"My son gets many compliments for this place, but they should all be addressed to you and your husband," the old man said gruffly.

"They are, Mr. Barry, and you are kind enough to send us a lot of marvellous clients ... so please know we are very grateful." She moved away gracefully.

Over the years she had learned just how much people like to be recognised, acknowledged, but not monopolised by restaurant staff. She wished that Quentin would come back just for a week, sit at the discreet table in the booth and see how the restaurant that bore his name carried on while he lived and painted in the hot African sun.

She would telephone Quentin now, this very afternoon. She needed to keep him up to speed about the documentary anyway. She had written when it was first suggested and asked his permission but as they had expected he wrote back to say that the matter was entirely in their hands, he knew they would make the right choice.

She reached for the telephone.

He was having his early-evening mint tea served in a glass held by a metal container. One of the little boys in Fatama's corner shop brought it along at five-thirty every evening. Like the people who sent him bowls of vegetables scrubbed clean to make soup, or baskets of luscious fruit wiped lest an insect or a bruise appear. They were so good to him. Quentin could have never asked for kinder people, but he had an urge to go home. Just to see was it home or another country, a different world? That was the moment she rang. The cool unhurried voice of Brenda Brennan.

They had just served 120 spectacular lunches, his father had been in, and one of the staff, Mon, a laughing young waitress could not believe that they didn't actually own the place themselves, and that there was a Quentin.

"Did you tell her I'd be no good to her?" he laughed as he always did about his sexuality.

"No, I did not. You are good to her providing her with a great restaurant to train in. Anyway, she doesn't want you, she's landed one of our most prestigious customers from the bank next door."

He didn't ask why Brenda called. She would come to it.

I was thinking, would you like to come back for a visit, Quentin? Just sit and observe us secretly. We'd love to show off for you."

"You're psychic ... I was just thinking of it."

They fixed a date. It was for a few weeks ahead.

Til leave it to you to tell your father about your plans." Brenda was diplomatic.

"Thank you. I'll take my mother to choose a hat one day and I'll probably call Father the day before I leave. Less is best. Do you feel that too about families?" Quentin was always polite and never intrusive. Nobody minded answering any of his direct questions.

"Well, my parents are mainly fine, but then I always had plenty of sisters to share them with, unlike you. Sort of shared the load."

"Yes, there was just me, a big disappointment to them both."

"Your father's in here very regularly, Quentin. He can't be all that disappointed in you. In fact, he boasts of being your father."

"Imagine." There were very bitter tones in his voice.

"Will it just be you?" Brenda asked. Once there had been a delightful young man, Katar.

"I'll be on my own," he said.

Til make sure Patrick has something from our poor imitation of Moroccan cuisine when you come," she promised. "We do a nice orange and cinnamon salad with a chicken tajine, but it's not quite exotic enough."

"Probably quite exotic enough for Dublin," Quentin laughed.

"You have been away for a long time," she said. She talked to Patrick about it that night.

"You should have said a couscous," he complained. "He'd know we were trying, at least."

"He's not coming home to examine the food," Brenda said.

"What for, then?"

"I don't know." She didn't know. It seemed too odd to say she thought he was coming home to say goodbye. He came in exactly on time and smiled warmly as he was introduced to the staff. A tall, slight man, forty-something, still handsome, tanned, but tired-looking.

"Where did he get the money to own a place like this?" Mon whispered to Yan.

"I heard it was from some inheritance," Yan said.

"But who? Not his awful father, for sure." Mon shook her head. "Look at his face. He looks like a sort of saint really, doesn't he?"

You couldn't speak softly enough to avoid detection by Brenda Brennan, who could, after all, lip-read. "Quentin's not exactly a saint," she said to them pleasantly. "But he came by the place legally. From an old friend."

She watched their mouths drop open with the shock of being overheard and smiled to herself. It had been so useful, that little trick, she'd learned so very much over the years. Quentin saw her smile when she came back to the table.

"I'd love to know what you're thinking," he said gently.

"I might even tell you later. Now I have to get the show on the road."

Brenda made sure that Quentin had two kinds of bottled water. She sensed he would not drink wine. She ordered a tray of appetisers. Something he could pick from. She had seen enough people come and go to know that he was not going to eat very much. Quentin Barry was a sick man. He ate in the booth and watched his mother come to lunch with three of her friends. Sara Barry had aged in a way that she would not have enjoyed had she been able to observe it properly. She looked puffy and rather silly. He would have advised her against the light pastel colours and the fussy jewellery.

Quentin's mother had no idea that she was being closely watched from the discreet little booth across the restaurant. All she cared about was that the four women at her table realised just how much she spent on clothes. She talked to them about the wisdom of having an account at Haywards store, it saved so much trouble in the end. You just waved your card and that was that, they were so obliging.

Quentin felt sorry for her. The staff in Haywards would be equally helpful and obliging had she waved a credit card, a chequebook or a fistful of notes. He had worked there for long enough to know. All those years before his luck had changed. He knew Mr. George, Mr. Harold and Miss Lucy and how little respect they had for card holders above anyone else.

And he thought back on how his future had been written for him through the generosity of Mr. Toby Hayward, who still wrote to him from Australia and who had given him this strange, unexpected start and a chance to own his own restaurant.

It had all been so mysterious. Quentin had been told that his best policy was to ask no deep questions.

Katar had said the restaurant had been given to him by God, some vague Irish god who knew Quentin was unhappy and wanted him to have a business that would eventually give him the funds to go out to Morocco. But then, Katar was the sunniest person Quentin ever knew.

Ever had known. Impossible to believe that he would never hear that laugh or see those dancing eyes again. He had brought Katar to this very table once. Quentin smiled as he remembered the occasion.

I would like to run around and tell them all at every table that this is ours, ours. Then I would like there to be a trumpet sound .. . ta-ra, ta-ra . .. and you would stand up and we would all sing .. . "For Quentin, he ees the jolly fine fellow"."

Katar would have liked that, and would have seen nothing silly or inappropriate in it. Only a celebration, like his whole happy life had been. Even the last months of his illness.

"It's so good for me, I have you to look after me, to tell me stories in the dark night. Who will do the same for you?"

"Ah, there are plenty who will." Quentin had put cold rose water on Katar's hot brow.

"Well, you must go and find them, be ready to ask them, let them know you need help. Not the false braveness, swear to me. I will know, I will be looking at you."

"I swear, Katar," Quentin had said. "No false braveness."

But oddly, when the time did come, Quentin didn't need any friend. He just looked at the beauty of the hot country he had come to think of as his own. Lying calmly and resting there brought him peace. Life didn't seem so huge and important somehow. You were just part of a process, like mountain ranges and sandstorms and the blossoms that came in springtime. Next week he would be back there and he would wait. It would not be frightening. But first, he had decisions to make here.

About his father and mother there would be few problems. They had already said goodbye to him in a meaningful sense, long, long ago.

"Mother, can I take you out and buy you a hat?" Quentin asked on the phone.

"I'm not going out to some awful souk in Marrakesh."

"I'm in Dublin, Mother."

"That's good." She didn't sound excited or pleased.

"So?"

"So, of course I'd love a hat," Sara Barry said. She didn't say she would love to see her son, but then she didn't know he was dying. "Did you know that Quentin's in Dublin?" Sara asked her husband that night.

"No, but he'll call from the airport before he leaves, that's what he usually does." Derek Barry barely looked up from his newspaper.

"That's because you have nothing to talk to him about," she criticised.

"Yes, that's true, unlike you who can compare shades of lipstick with him after all." Derek spoke bitterly.

"See what I mean, ready to pick a fight where none exists."

"Oh, my fights with Quentin are long over," Derek Barry sighed. Quentin had one more decision to make.

The restaurant. The place that bore his name. He had asked Tobe Hayward his thoughts, but the old man had said quite simply, "Believe me, when it comes to your time, you will do something worthwhile."

That's all Tobe Hayward could come up with. But he also reminded him that everything was in Quentin's name.

Quentin had always supposed that he would know what to do when the time came. But he had not known how soon the time would come. How ridiculously early in fact. Still, he felt in his heart that everything was clear now, as Tobe had forecast it would be. He knew what should happen next.

For now he would get to know the staff and to talk to them.

The beautiful Mon who told him every heartbeat of her romance with Mr. Clive Harris, and how she didn't give a damn about the Italian who had sweet-talked her out of all her money. He was welcome to it.

He heard from Yan about how his father back in Brittany wanted to put money into a small restaurant there for him. And how Yan didn't know how to tell him he was having too much fun in Ireland to leave.

He discovered that Harry had thought working in Dublin, the heart of the Republic of Ireland, would be a misery that he was prepared to endure in order to get a good training. But in fact he was never happier, and all his friends came down to Dublin for the weekends now. Times had changed, he explained to Quentin. Quentin got to meet some of Brenda and Patrick's friends. The extraordinary woman who called herself Signora, who chopped vegetables, cleaned brasses, spoke flawless Italian, was going to marry a divorced man at her age, and confided to Quentin that she had the happiest life of any human on the planet.

The man she was going to marry had apparently lost money to some financier. They had been planning to have a wedding party with it but they could well survive without a party. And anyway maybe they were too old for one.

He met Blouse Brennan, brother of Patrick, so proud of his red haired wife Mary and their little son. Blouse confided that, compared to a lot of the fellows he had been at school with like Horse and Shay Harris, he had done very well. And no one would have expected it at the time.

Quentin met all kinds of people that he never knew existed in the old Ireland. There were Ella Brady and Derry King, who were

going to put together a documentary about the place. His restaurant! Quentin made a note to write to Tobe about that.

And their colleagues in Firefly Films, Sandy and Nick. Utterly dedicated to their job.

Were there people like that around when he was young, full of courage and determination? Quentin wondered. There was no one to ask. Brother Rooney wasn't there to visit any more. He had gone to some big garden in the sky.

There were Tom and Cathy, who ran a catering service. Sometimes they did outside catering for the restaurant's clients, so they were in and out of the place a lot. They were expecting a baby, and there was a lot of kissing and hugging and wishing them good luck about that from time to time.

Quentin saw the sad look on Brenda's face one day when they had gone.

"Was that something you would have liked?" he asked gently.

"Oh yes, so much. And Patrick would have been a wonderful father."

"Still, there have been compensations?" he asked hopefully.

"This restaurant is our baby," Brenda said, looking around the place very proudly.

He smiled and suddenly she realised that perhaps she had been presumptuous. I didn't mean to suggest anything except that we have loved working here," she said, flustered.

"Did you wonder why I came back, Brenda?" Quentin asked her gently.

"Why shouldn't you come back to see how well it's all going? I told you we wanted to show off."

Her eyes were too bright. She knew all right.

"I'm dying, Brenda," he said. I brought those dates and nuts over to the booth like you asked me," Blouse Brennan explained to his brother. "But Brenda and Quentin were crying, so I decided not to interrupt them," he said.

"Crying?" Patrick was surprised.

"Yes, Brenda was using the starched napkin to wipe her face."

"That's serious crying. You were right not to disturb them," Patrick said. "Any other dramas out there?"

I was afraid to look," Blouse admitted. "It's safer in the kitchen." And he went back to the vegetables with Signora, the two of them chopping contentedly and expertly. It was good to be far away from All Human Life, which seemed to be fairly volatile out in the dining room. "What about your friend, Katar?" Brenda asked, unaware of her tear-stained face.

"He went before me, last year," Quentin said. "Thank you for remembering his name."

"Who would forget him? He was charming and so full of life . .. to say something which is foolish, because it's no longer true."

"He liked it here. We sat at this table and Katar said that if the poor and the sick could only eat great food like this, they would surely get well ... or at any rate, they would die happy."

They laughed at the memory of the handsome laughing Moroccan boy, unafraid to face death, full of optimistic philosophy to the end.

"Well, that's what you could do, Quentin. Sell this place as a going concern and with the money you get set up a kind of charity ... very high-quality food for those who would not have been able to afford it."

"I can't sell this from over your heads . .. you and Patrick have made it what it is," Quentin protested.

"We'll get employed, our name is good ..."

"But it's like your baby, you said."

"There are other babies, Quentin."

"But Blouse and Signora and everyone ..."

"Will also survive."

"Isn't there enough in the business to do both .. . keep this place going and the other?"

"Of course there could be, do you ever read those accountants" reports? They are always saying you should expand ... but you will want money for medication, for clinics, for whatever .. ."

"No, no, I will go back to the house where Katar and I lived, that is best." And his face looked much more peaceful as they talked about practical things. Blouse brought them dates, honey and nuts. Figures were written down on paper.

"And this film documentary, do you not want to be any part of it?" Brenda asked.

He shook his head gently. He wanted nothing at all to do with it but was happy if it went ahead.

Now he wanted her to listen carefully.

Quentin Barry was selling his enterprise to Brenda and Patrick

Brennan, who would pay him a small, once-only payment, and then a share of their profits would be paid every year to a company called The Kindness of Katar. They would cook gourmet food for those who were terminally ill.

"We'll need a lawyer," he said. I don't want my father's stuffy old friends."

"I know the very girl. Maggie Nolan. She was partly the cause of our coming here. It would be a nice way of rounding it off."

He loved the story of Maggie's eager family and wiped his eyes. "Katar said I cried very easily. If he could see me now," he said.

At the end of the week, Maggie and her colleagues had been in and out of the private dining booth several times and everything was signed.

Quentin Barry had bought his mother an elegant hat and told her that she had the finest cheekbones in Dublin. He had taken his father for a long walk out by the sea and commented on the elegant boats and the good state of the Irish economy. He held their hands a little longer than usual when he said goodbye, but not so much longer that they might get suspicious.

And when he left the restaurant, he hugged Brenda and Patrick as if he never wanted to get into the taxi. If anyone was close enough, they would have heard him say that he too had a baby and that he was leaving it in good hands.

PART IV

Chapter Twelve.

Tim and Barbara Brady had soup and toast for a late lunch, as they did most days. "She didn't go to bed at all?" Barbara asked.

"Apparently not. She made a few calls on her mobile. Then she went out."

"And did you talk about anything . . . you know?"

"No, Barbara, I said nothing about anything that was in a private letter for her, one which we were never meant to have read."

"I'm not sure, it was open . .."

"Anyway, we didn't discuss anything, nor, as I told you, will I bring the matter up. And she called back to ask us to go to a brunch at Deirdre's on Sunday, so that we can meet the millionaire."

"Good, that's something," Barbara said.

"I don't know," Tim Brady said gloomily. I've had it up to here with millionaires, if you must know." "Apparently, your friend Ella was in America, and it didn't take her long to pick up a sugar daddy there," Frank said to his wife Nuala.

I don't know what you're talking about."

"And you sure don't know much about your so-called friends. They were spotted getting off the New York flight and into a limo this morning. So can you get on to her sharpish?"

"I can't, Frank."

"Why not? You're always bleating on about what friends the two of you are."

"Not since you said I shouldn't be friends with her any more. She didn't take well to that."

"Call her sometime today, Nuala," Frank said firmly.

"He's dead, what does it matter now?"

"Today, Nuala." Ella was early for their meeting, but Derry was there already waiting for her in the bar. It had only been ten hours, yet it seemed much longer since they had been together.

"I had an odd, restless day, how about you?"

"Odd and restless. That covers it," he agreed.

"Did you sleep?"

"Not a bit. And you?"

"Not a wink. So I don't think we should go to Quentins tonight. We're both so jet-lagged we might fall asleep the moment we got in the door."

"So what would you suggest?" He was agreeable to whatever she came up with.

But she felt at a loss. If she still had her own flat, she could have made him supper. "Do you know, Derry, I haven't any idea," she said honestly.

"Great pair of movie-makers we are," he laughed. "We spent day and night in New York talking about this city of Dublin and how to tell its story, and now that we're here, we don't even know where to begin."

They both began to laugh with a slightly hysterical tinge to the laughter. They agreed to go to the restaurant in the hotel. But just as they got up to move, a man approached them. : "Ella Brady? I'm Mike Martin. Remember we talked before about the late Don Richardson . . ."

"Yes, I was very sorry to hear of his death." She kept moving but the man moved with them and Derry steered her to the lift.

The man positioned himself between them and the door, and spoke again. "I know he tried to get in touch with you before he died."

I must go now." She looked at Derry for help.

Very quickly Derry put his large, square frame between them.

Mike Martin reached around behind Derry. "Please, Ella ... it was important to him."

"Excuse me," she said, and made for the lift.

Derry was behind her. He turned around to the man who was still trying to catch Ella's arm. "I think you heard the lady," he said.

"Don't you obstruct me!" Mike Martin began.

Derry King was very swift. He was into the lift before her and then pulled Ella in with him. She was shaking and he put his arms around her to calm her down as he pressed the number of his floor. It was a bear hug, a brotherly gesture. The kind of hug he could have given to anyone who had been through a shock. It only lasted a few seconds. Then the lift stopped.

In the suite he opened a miniature brandy. "Medicinal. I'll split it with you," he said.

She swallowed and stopped trembling.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"A henchman," she said.

"What a great word! What does it mean?"

"You know," she said.

"Well, I imagine that it means a timeserver, a sidekick, a supporter. But what's a hench exactly?"

"It's okay, Derry. No need to fuss over me. I'm fine now." She managed a watery smile.

"No, I'm interested. I'll go look it up."

"You may find a Gideon's Bible, but I don't think they run to dictionaries," Ella said.

"I never travel without one." Derry went to a table where he had unpacked some books and papers. She watched, amazed, as he looked it up.

"Apparently it comes from some Old English word and some Old German word meaning a horse! Horseman! Isn't that absurd?" He was shaking his head with annoyance.

"It's not a very big dictionary," Ella said.

"No, but it's a very good one. I look up ten "words every day, always have."

"Why on earth?"

"If you leave school at fifteen, it gives you a complex," he said.

I don't buy that. You went back to school, for heaven's sake!"

"Yes, but they never catch up on what you should have been learning earlier."

"This isn't a real conversation," she said suddenly.

"No, but it will do until we get over that guy downstairs." Ella agreed easily. Tm sorry for involving you," she said in a low voice.

"You didn't," Derry said.

"He's nothing. He's not important. It's not serious."

"You know that's not true."

"Why do you say that, Derry?"

"Because he pushed right up to you in a public space, talking about private things which he's not meant to know about in front of the whole of Dublin. He's come out of hiding, Ella, and he doesn't care who knows it. He shoved me. He was going to grab at you. It's very damn serious and you know it."

She stared at him.

"And if it's not serious, why did you bring that laptop computer with you in that shoulder bag? I'm not a fool. You were afraid to leave it at home, Ella. So can you just stop telling me that people aren't important, that things aren't serious? Give me some credit for something, will you?" He looked angry and upset.

"All right, I'll tell you. I got a call from Nuala. Remember her in the saga?"

He nodded.

"She said she called to see how I was, but I know her husband and his brothers are very anxious indeed to find me. I'm not sure why. But I got scared and brought the laptop with me. I was hoping you might not notice ... but you have very sharp eyes. And I'm really very grateful to you for getting me out of all that business downstairs."

"Yes, but what about tomorrow and the day after?" he asked. "Who'll get you out of it then?"

Til have to think, Derry."

"Do you trust me?"

"You know I do."

"Then why don't we look at it together?" he said.

"What?"

"You could go phone us up some coffee and sandwiches, and we'll open it up and decide what to do."

There were tears of relief in her eyes as she reached over to the telephone and called room service. We, Nuala, I don't know where Ella is tonight," Deirdre said. "You must know, you're her friend."

"And so were you, until you started behaving like some kind of security firm trying to get her to talk to Frank."

"It's not Frank, it's his brothers," Nuala whined.

"Well, whoever it is, they have no sense. Ella is in bits over Don being dead and they don't have a word of sympathy for her. They just go on behaving like tracker dogs snuffling round to see does she know anything about Don's business affairs. No wonder she doesn't return your calls or speak to you or anything."

"She did speak to me. She just said she was going out. I assumed it was with you." Nuala was very plaintive.

"It wasn't, Nuala, so leave her alone, will you?"

Tm just telling you this, they'll find her."

"And I'm telling you this too. I don't like your tone. It sounds like a threat."

"It's not a threat, it's just that I'm worried about Frank's brothers."

"With every reason, and if you come at me again about them, I'll sing loud and clear about what I got up to with Eric, one of the said brothers, on your wedding day. So think carefully before hounding Ella any more. Do you get my drift?"

Deirdre hung up the telephone and took down the recipe book. "What's that whole series of numbers there?" Ella asked Derry, pointing to a section of figures as they sat looking at the screen.

"It's like a series of routings. Someone bought a property here, sold it on there, it was sold again, the money invested here, the money taken out and put into something else." He shrugged as he spoke.

"And could you work out where something went? Suppose you ran this program?"

"Yes, but there's no proof that it would all be in the same name, the same ownership, as it started out with at the beginning, if you see what I mean."

"And I suppose that ordinary people don't keep records in this very complicated way." Ella looked at him.

"No, not unless they want to obscure things."

"And can you tell if it had been going on from the very start?" Her voice was very small.

"It goes back a fair number of years, certainly, since they set up this particular program and way of keeping records."

"It's not a last-minute panic, then?"

"Afraid not, Ella."

"I suppose I wanted to think they were clean at the start, but you say they were hiding things all along."

"Perhaps they were doing it with the knowledge of clients who might have wanted to hide things also." Derry King struggled to be fair. "But from the sound of things, the clients were not informed of these routings."

"I think not. So they always planned it, Don and Ricky Rice." She shook her head in disbelief.

"About this Ricky Rice

"His father-in-law. He pulled all the strings, made all the decisions. He dragged Don into it all. He was struggling to get out."

"Sure."

"No, I know I sound as if I'm defending Don. But Ricky Rice was the brains of it all. He ran it with an iron fist. They all had to make disks of their negotiations each day and mail them to Ricky personally. That's how much control he had."

"Yeah."

"What are you saying? You're just answering me in grunts, Derry. What is it?"

"There's no mention of Ricky Rice in here, none at all. That man could walk back in to this country without a fear in the world. His name is on nothing here, nothing at all."

"What do you mean?"

"There's nothing to tie him in with any of it. The entire thing was engineered by Don Richardson." "Any luck finding Ella, Nuala?" Frank said when he came in.

"No." She was sullen.

"Well, you can thank your stars that someone's prepared to go and look for her. Mike Martin phoned. He's found her, wining and dining in Stephen's Green with an American. Staying with him in the hotel there, even. Didn't take long for her to get over her grieving."

"Frank, listen to me."

"No, why should I? You listen to me. My brothers asked you to do a simple thing and you wouldn't do it. You know how much we owe them and this was one occasion when you could have done a little digging . . ."

"I did do a little digging, and they won't like what I found. Not

one bit. And if we don't stop hounding Ella everyone will know. Including Carmel, for God's sake."

"Know what?" Frank was confused.

"Know what your beautiful brother has been up to ..."

"You mentioned Carmel."

"Yes, I mentioned Carmel, because your brother Eric, if you remember, is her loving, faithful husband. She would be most interested in knowing what he was up to on our wedding day. Our own wedding day, I tell you, Frank."

She saw from his face that the escapade with Deirdre did not come entirely as a bolt from the blue to Frank. "Oh shit," he said.

"Precisely. And you knew, you knew about it, didn't you? Very funny, all lads together. Well, let's see what Carmel says."

"You're not going to tell her?" Frank was fearful now. Carmel was the most fearsome of the sisters-in-law.

"I hadn't intended to, but believe me, Deirdre will if anyone goes near Ella."

"It will implicate Deirdre too, of course," Frank began to bluster.

"She doesn't give a damn if she's implicated or not. And indeed if I thought that this is the kind of thing that you go along with, I'd damn well tell Carmel myself."

"Nuala," he begged. "You know I've never looked at another woman in my whole life. You know that, don't you?"

"No, I don't know, but I'm sure your brother will know and will tell me all about it when he has had to face Carmel in full flow," Nuala said. Ella tried to take it all in. No mention of Ricky Rice in the company that bore his name. "Is there something missing, something we just haven't been able to access?"

"I can't see it."

"But the very name of the company even? Somewhere in there it must show it belonged to Mr. Rice."

"That's all here. Look," Derry said, scrolling down. "Three years ago there was a deed transfer. Rice gave it all to Richardson. It was witnessed. It's registered. The entire company belonged to Don Richardson."

"But why did his father-in-law run away with him, then?" Ella felt her head spinning.

"Maybe it was a set-up. If it all hit the fan, the father-in law could run with them. If it cleared, well and good, and the father-in-law could walk home free as a bird. An older man, he might have stronger roots in Ireland."

"And his daughter, didn't she have shares?" Ella could barely speak.

"Not that it shows here." Derry shook his head.

"So they can all come home now? Now that Don's dead."

"Well, Lord, Ella. I'm no expert on all this, but it appears to me from reading this for the last two hours that they could. In terms of not being held responsible."

She was silent.

"They may not want to, of course," he said hesitantly.

"Derry, I don't feel very well. I don't think I could go back to Tara Road tonight. Would you mind very much if I stayed here?"

"Not at all. I was going to suggest something along the same lines," he said.

"You were? Good. Then I must ring my parents. Do you mind?"

She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice to her mother. She was going to spend the night in the hotel. There was a lot of work to be done.

"Your mom okay with that?"

"She hasn't been okay with anything I've done for two years, but she didn't make any fuss," Ella said. "That was Ella," Barbara reported. "She said we were not to wait up for her. She's going to stay the night in the hotel. They have a lot of work to do, apparently."

I see," Ella's father said.

"Don't be like that, Tim."

I'm not being like anything. She's a grown-up woman. She's free to do whatever she wants to." But he sounded tight-lipped.

"All I'm saying is that if you'd been talking to her, you'd have felt the same. This isn't anything like the last time. It's not a romance. I have an intuition about it."

I'm sure you're right. Neither of us had much intuition about anything last time round." "Should we order more coffee and maybe some dessert? You know, to keep us going "while we work things out."

"Yes, that sounds fine." Ella sounded vague and distant as if she had forgotten what coffee was. "What things do we have to work out, exactly?"

Derry walked around the room for a bit, trying to find the

words. For the first time since she met him, he seemed unsure. When he was speaking about his Foundation, about Kimberly, about his work, about his hatred for his father, he had been definite. But now he was searching for a way to say what had to be said.

"Like whether you take the bank drafts for your father. Like whether you should hand this machine in."

She watched him objectively. A big, square man in his shirtsleeves. Someone so well-known that even Harriet and her friends had heard of him. Tired now, much more tired than he had been earlier. Those lines etched on his face, as if they would never leave.

"What do you think I should do, Derry?" she asked.

"No. No way. It's your call, Ella. I only skimmed the surface, to identify what you have to do."

"Do I have to do these things now?" She knew she looked piteous, putting off the decision.

"Sooner rather than later, I'd say, since you asked me." His face was worried.

"Why? It's been going on for months. Why can't we wait a little longer?" She looked at him hopefully.

"Because of that guy down in the bar pushing us around, for one thing. Because of your friend with all the brothers-in-law, for another. Because people know you have this and they want to know what's in it, and to get their hands on what they can."

"I'm not ready yet to make up my mind," she said.

"As I said, it's your call."

He went to the phone and ordered the coffee. She sat there and watched the traffic of Dublin swirl around Stephen's Green.

And then they talked about other things. She told him about her driving test and how she must have been the only person in the world to drive into a motorbike three minutes after she set off. The examiner had said it was entirely the biker's fault and that Ella had been cool and responsible throughout.

Derry said he didn't remember how he learned to drive. Possibly when he was about twelve. It could have been a friend of his father's who taught him. He had often driven his father's van home when the man had passed out.

He asked Ella what else had happened in her odd and restless day. She told him about her lunch with Deirdre, and about the planned lunch party to meet him on Sunday, and the news that the marvellous twins from Hell would be there.

He wondered were there any hints about handling them.

"Tell them nothing about yourself," Ella warned him.

"I'm good at that," he admitted.

"You are, too," she said, smiling at him.

Tm sorry. Does that make me some kind of a pain?"

"No, not at all. We're all so blabbermouth here . ,. telling everything. You're a refreshing change, keeping yourself to yourself."

"Ask me anything, Ella, and I'll answer."

"No, of course I won't."

"I want you to. I want to be free and open and say what I mean. I've not been that for a long time."

"Can it be about me and not about you?"

"Anything you like."

"All right, Derry, if this isn't cheating ... What would you do about all this if you were me?" With a sweep of her hand, she pointed to the laptop computer.

He paused, but she didn't rush in. She knew that he was going to answer. Eventually he spoke. "I'm not you, Ella. But I promised you that I'd answer and therefore I will. I would take the bank drafts for your father, but I know you are not going to do that. And I know without your telling me that he wouldn't take them, either."

She blinked with amazement at his understanding.

"And about the rest of it, I would hand it over. That's what I, Derry King, would do, but I don't know what you, Ella Brady, should do. If it were my own land and my fellow citizens, I would have to do that. I would think it was illegal to sit on such information and say nothing. But here it could be different. And I know how much you loved this guy, and don't want people's heavy boots walking around in his business. So this is possibly not an option for you at all. And may never be. Now, Ella, is that upfront and blabbermouth or what?"

She looked at him with such gratitude she could hardly speak. "Thank you, Derry," she said eventually.

"No, it doesn't hurt to be challenged."

"You've been a very good friend to me," Ella said. I'd like to do the same for you."

"Maybe you will," he said.

"You're right about one thing. I'm not going to take those drafts. There were people who were left much worse off by this whole disaster than we were. And you're right too that my father wouldn't want them, either."

He nodded.

"But the truth is, I don't know what I'm going to do about all this mess here in the computer. You're right, it will have to be sooner rather than later. But there's something else, just one thing I have to do first."

He put his head on one side to listen to her.

"Could I talk to you about that tomorrow?" she asked him.

"Whenever, Ella," he said.

"Thanks, Derry."

And they sat there as old friends do when they are tired, when there's nothing that has to be said because everything is understood.

They made plans for their Saturday. Derry was to take a bus tour of Dublin. Ella would go to Quentins and get things moving. They would not meet again until they went to Deirdre's apartment, at noon on Sunday.

"What shall I bring?" he asked.

"Wine," Ella said.

"How much wine?" he wondered.

"Relax. I know this is Ireland, but just one bottle. White or red."

"Thanks for marking my card," he said.

"Thanks for giving me a place to sleep," she said, taking off her shoes.

"Now please. I am a gentleman, in my heart, anyway. Please have the bedroom," he begged.

"Out of the question, Derry. I sleep on this lovely sofa. Put that rug over me, will you? I'll be out of here before you wake." She gave him a big, cheerful smile.

"You're a great girl, Ella, and it's a pleasure to be working with you," he said as he tucked her feet in.

"You're a sort of hero," she mumbled.

"What?" he asked.

But she was asleep. At 9 a.m. Derry woke to the phone. It was Kimberly. "God, you were asleep! I'm just so sorry," she said. I was wakeful, I thought I'd call you."

"No, I have to get up, it's fine," he said.

"All I want to know is, did you survive?" she asked.

"I think so. I haven't seen much of the place yet."

"But no dramas, no scenes, no regrets?" she wanted to know.

"No, none of those things, Kim," he said.

He looked at the door to the sitting room, which he had left open. Was Ella awake? Listening? He had better go and see. "Hold on, Kim," he said, and walked next door. The sofa had a folded rug on it and beside it was her computer. With a note on top. You are a generous man, Derry King. I will never forget your kindness to me last night. Please, can I leave this machine with you to look after for me? I will have made my decision about what it contains by Sunday night, and I so appreciate your help. Love, Ella He went back to the telephone. "Sorry, Kim. I thought it was room service. No, everything's fine here, as you said to me years ago. It's an ordinary place, not full of dragons, as I thought it might be." He heard her breathe more easily.

"Thank God, Derry. That's what I wanted so much for you. You deserve it," she said.

He sat for a while thinking about their conversation. In his whole life he had never lied to her so much. Everything was not fine here. He had not been checking room service. There were more dragons in this place than he had encountered for a long time. None of them having anything to do with him but everything to do with Ella Brady.

"I'm sorry for staying out all night," Ella said. "I hope you weren't worried or anything?"

"No, not when you called, of course not," her father said.

"I meant worried that I was going to start yet another unsuitable affair." She managed a slight smile.

"No, heavens, no," he protested.

"Derry's not in the same league at all, totally different. He's all work, no time at all for relationships of any kind. Anyway, you'll meet him tomorrow at Dee's place."

"And is he enjoying Dublin?" Ella's mother asked.

"Hard to know. He plays it very close to the chest." Ella's face was thoughtful. She seemed miles away.

"Will you be at home today?"

"No, Mother, I've a lot of things to sort out." Again she was distant. "I want you to think about something very seriously," she said eventually. "All the money you lost because of Don, it's there, you know, in this safe deposit box, banker's drafts, cash, bearer's bonds, whatever. You've read the letter. You know where it is. I haven't looked, but I know it's there. If you want to take it, I'd be happy for you to do that."

"Now, Tim," Barbara said in triumph, "I knew she would feel like this. Your father said not to mention it to you, but I said you'd see sense about it all. After all, it was his last wish that you should be seen all right and not have to work like a dog."

Chapter Thirteen.

"Oh, I'm not taking one euro of it, Mother, but you and Father, that's different. It's your choice."

"And of course, if we don't take it, then it just lies there," Barbara Brady was almost pleading.

"Or we could give it to others who were defrauded," Ella said crisply.

"We don't want it," her father said.

"Tim!"

"Discuss it today. Tell me what you come up with tomorrow. Oh, and there's another thing, Dad. In your talking to people, did you think that Don or Ricky was the brains of the outfit?"

"Ricky Rice, they said, but Don injected all the charm and the sort of razzmatazz into it," Tim Brady spoke ruefully. A man reduced to living in a wooden house in his own garden because of someone's charm and razzmatazz. "Would it surprise you to know that Ricky Rice owned nothing, that it was all in Don's name? Ricky is free to come back here any day he wants to and may well do so now that Don is dead."

"He'd never have the gall. He couldn't face people who've lost money," Ella's father said.

If he wasn't a part of it, then why did he flee?" Ella's mother was practical.

I don't know. I've been thinking about that all night," Ella said.

"They were always together, he and Don, and he was crazy about his grandchildren. Maybe he couldn't bear to let them go." Tim Brady tried to work it out.

"But why wasn't his name on things?" Ella wondered.

"There must have been a good reason," Tim Brady said. Ella drove down to the Liffey and parked her little car. She walked around the apartment blocks where Don Richardson had had his little hideaway, the place he was meant to be living when he stayed all that time with her. They were small and purpose-built. Not much movement around the place on a Saturday morning. Perhaps people would come out later and buy papers and milk for their coffee. She must enquire what had happened to his little flat here. Who had bought it, who lived a life in those four walls now.

Then she drove back to look at her own flat. The place where she had been so happy with Don. It was rented now by two girls who worked in the television station down the road. Ella had found them in twenty-four hours, once she decided to move. She

had slaved to leave the place looking perfect, and even donated some of her own possessions. Like the duvet. She could never sleep under it again.

She parked across the road and looked at the place thoughtfully for a long time. If it had not been for meeting Don Richardson, she might be living there still to this very day. Her garden was shabby. Had she ever noticed that before? She longed to go over and tidy it up a bit, take away some of the autumn leaves and dead stalks of flowers. But what would they say if they had seen her, the women who worked in the television station? They had already thought her eccentric. After all, the time they met her she was famous, her photograph every day in the evening newspaper, usually beside the words "love nest". If they were to spot her back months later, kneeling in their garden, then they really would be alarmed.

She drove past the school where she had taught. She had been happy there too, before Don Richardson had been part of her life. The kids had been mainly great. She wondered how the new teacher was getting on. Was she able to cope with loudmouths like that brassy Jacinta, who always answered back and went as far as she could get away with? Still, no point in sighing over them. Kids would learn with whoever was put in front of them. They were very resourceful.

Which reminded her about Maud and Simon, "who were coming to lunch tomorrow. She must find out how they were related to Tom or Cathy, whichever it was. They kept saying that Cathy's parents were not really official grandparents, but then they got everything so confused. Dee said she did hear once, but it was all so complicated and far-fetched that you'd be asleep by the time it was explained.

She drove south of Dublin, then through the suburbs and by the sea to Killiney, where Don and Margery had their elegant home. Where his sons had played tennis, where his father-in-law had visited so often it was like his second home. Ella knew the address but she had never seen the place. Today she needed to look at it.

It said Private Road, but there was no gate keeping you out. Just the words and the size of the house would do that, keep you away, unless you had business there. She drove slowly along, noticing the gardeners here, the window-cleaners there, the activity of an autumn Saturday morning in a wealthy area. She saw the big cars parked in the driveways, the women who dressed to go to the supermarkets and shopping centres, the expensive security systems. This was where Margery Rice had lived for years with her father, husband and sons. Yet she must have lived a lot of the time on her own. Her sons had been at school, her father out working, her husband in the arms of Ella Brady. And today Margery was calling herself Mrs. Brady and living in Playa de los Angeles, in Spain. Did she want to be back in this splendid house with the immaculate green grass? Had it been sold, or did they rent it out? Would Margery and her father, if they were so blameless about everything, come home and take up where they had left off?

She got out of her car, went to lean on the gate. She had to study this place and see if it told her anything at all about what might have happened.

A woman came out to speak to her. She was about twenty-five, with jeans, untidy hair, and a two-year-old by the hand. "Can I help you at all?"

"No, I'm just looking at these lovely homes. I used to know people who lived here, the Richardsons."

"Oh yes, indeed."

"Did you know them?" Ella asked.

"Only knew of them. I'm sort of house-sitting this place. My uncle rented it after they left. He was a great friend of theirs."

"He must have been very cut up when Don died."

"Yes, I think he was," the girl said, rescuing the child who had run away.

"He's sweet, isn't he?" Ella said when the child had been retrieved.

"He's Max. He's a handful. It makes it difficult to go out and work, so that's why it was "wonderful to get this place right out of the blue. My name's Sasha, by the way." Tm Ella."

"Would you like to come in and have a coffee?"

Ella thought for a moment. The name Ella hadn't rung any alarm bells, reminding the young woman of love nests. So why not then? She followed Sasha into Don and Margery's house.

It was fully furnished. There were paintings on the walls by artists she knew Don liked. There were Don's kinds of books. Nothing could have changed. This house was as they had left it the day they disappeared.

"I'd have thought it would be ... you know, more bare."

"So did I when my uncle approached me. You see, Max doesn't

have any father on the scene, if you know what I mean, and I'm a bit of a family problem one way and another!" She smiled engagingly. She was an attractive person. She showed Ella how she had covered a lot of the good pieces with sheets so that Max wouldn't get his sticky fingers all over them. There was a view of the sea from one side of the house and of the countryside stretching down to the Wicklow Mountains from the other. It was a dream house. No wonder Sasha felt she had fallen on her feet to get to stay there.

"And does your uncle stay here too?"

"He comes and goes, but he travels a lot. Mike's not someone you'd pin down."

"Mike?"

"That's my uncle's name. Mike Martin. You must know him?"

"I've seen him on television, certainly," Ella said, looking around her nervously. "And are you expecting him today, do you think?"

"Oh, he never says, just turns up."

Ella put down her coffee and said she had to go.

Sasha was disappointed. "To be honest, I was hoping you'd stay. They're all so old round here, and desperately rich. You're more normal."

But Ella moved very quickly. Mike Martin was the man who was looking for her and the laptop.

"You didn't say how you knew the family," Sasha said as she came to see her off.

Ella thought for a moment. Sasha would tell Mike anyway. No point in hiding anything now. "Actually, I'm a bit of a problem in my family too, Sasha. The reason I knew them was that I was in love with Don Richardson. I was mad about him, and my heart is broken because he's dead. I just wanted to see where he lived when he was alive."

"Oh my God," Sasha said.

"So perhaps if you didn't tell your Uncle Mike, it might be better. For all of us."

Sasha nodded vigorously, and Max held out a face covered in ice-cream for a goodbye kiss.

Nothing would be said about her visit.

For the moment. Ella had bought a sandwich and a carton of milk. She drove up to Wicklow Gap, where you could sit and see nothing but hills and sheep and rocky paths down to a river in a valley. She always loved it here, and somehow things seemed clearer.

She took the rug out of the car and sat for a long time with her eyes on the quiet scene around her. Sometimes cars passed by and once or twice they parked nearby to look at the view from this vantage point. But nobody bothered her, and she wasn't really aware of them. And eventually the place worked its magic as it always did, and she got back into her car and drove home.

Her parents were anxious to discuss money, but Ella told them there was no need. "Just listen," Barbara Brady pleaded. "Your father won't take it and therefore I have agreed."