Tara Road

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TARA ROAD

Maeve Binchy

To my dearest Gordon, with all my love

CHAPTER ONE

Ria's mother had always been very fond of film stars. It was a matter of sadness to her that Clark Gable had died on the day Ria was born. Tyrone Power had died on the day Hilary had been born just two years earlier. But somehow that wasn't as bad. Hilary hadn't seen off the great king of cinema as Ria had. Ria could never see Gone with the Wind without feeling somehow guilty.

She told this to Ken Murray, the first boy who kissed her. She told him in the cinema. Just as he was kissing her, in fact.

'You're very boring,' he said, trying to open her blouse.

'I'm not boring,' Ria cried with some spirit. 'Clark Gable is there on the screen and I've told you something interesting. A coincidence. It's not boring.'

Ken Murray was embarrassed as so much attention had been called to them. People were shushing them and others were laughing. Ken moved away and huddled down in his seat as if he didn't want to be seen with her.

Ria could have kicked herself. She was almost sixteen. Everyone at school liked kissing, or said they did. Now she was starting to do it and she had made such a mess of it. She reached out her hand for him.

'I thought you wanted to look at the film,' he muttered.

'I thought you wanted to put your arm around me,' Ria said hopefully.

He took out a bag of toffees and ate one. Without even passing her the bag. The romantic bit was over.

Sometimes you could talk to Hilary, Ria had noticed. This wasn't one of those nights.

'Should you not talk when people kiss you?' she asked her sister.

'Jesus, Mary and Holy St Joseph,' said Hilary, who was getting dressed to go out.

I just asked,' Ria said. 'You'd know, with all your experience with fellows.'

Hilary looked around nervously in case anyone had heard. 'Will you shut up about my experience with fellows,' she hissed. 'Mam will hear you and that will put paid to either of us going anywhere ever again.'

Their mother had warned them many times that she was not going to stand for any cheap behaviour in the family. A widow woman left with two daughters had enough to worry her without thinking that her girls were tramps and would never get a husband. She would die happy if Hilary and Ria had nice respectable men and homes of their own. Nice homes, in a classier part of Dublin, places with a garden even. Nora Johnson had great hopes that they would all be able to move a little upwards. Somewhere nicer than the big sprawling housing estate where they lived now. And the way to find a good man was not by flaunting yourself at every man that came along.

'Sorry, Hilary,' Ria looked contrite. 'But anyway she didn't hear, she's looking at telly.'

Their mother did little else of an evening. She was tired, she said, when she got back from the dry cleaners where she worked at the counter. All day on your feet, it was nice to sit down and get transported to another world. Mam wouldn't have heard anything untoward about experience with fellows from upstairs.

Hilary forgave her—after all, she needed Ria to help her tonight. Mam had a system that as soon as Hilary got in she was to leave her handbag on the landing floor. That way when Mam got up to go to the bathroom in the night she'd know Hilary was home and would go to sleep happily. Sometimes it was Ria's job to leave the handbag out there at midnight, allowing Hilary to creep in at any hour, having taken only her keys and lipstick in her pocket.

'Who'll do it for me when the time comes?' Ria wondered.

'You won't need it if you're going to be blabbing and yattering on to fellows when they try to kiss you,' Hilary said. 'You'll not want to stay out late because you'll have nowhere to go.'

'I bet I will,' Ria said, but she didn't feel as confident as she sounded. There was a stinging behind her eyes.

She was sure she didn't look too bad. Her friends at school said she was very lucky to have all that dark curly hair and blue eyes. She wasn't fat or anything and her spots weren't out of control. But people didn't pick her out; she didn't have any kind of sparkle like other girls in the class did.

Hilary saw her despondent face. 'Listen, you're fine, you've got naturally curly hair, that's a plus for a start. And you're small, fellows like that. It will get better. Sixteen is the worst age, no matter what they tell you.' Sometimes Hilary could be very nice indeed. Usually on the nights she wanted her handbag left on the landing.

And of course Hilary was right. It did get better. Ria left school and like her elder sister did a secretarial course. There were plenty of fellows, it turned out. Nobody particularly special, but she wasn't in any rush. She would travel the world possibly before she settled down to marry.

'Not too much travelling,' her mother warned.

Nora Johnson thought that men might regard travel as fast. Men preferred to marry safer, calmer women. Women who didn't go gallivanting too much. It was only sensible to have advance information about men, Nora Johnson told her daughters. This way you could go armed into the struggle. There was a hint that she may not have been adequately informed herself. The late Mr Johnson, though he had a bright smile and wore his hat at a rakish angle, was not a good provider. He had not been a believer in nor a subscriber to life insurance policies. Nora Johnson did not want the same thing for her daughters when the time came.

'When do you think the time will come?' Ria asked Hilary.

'For what?' Hilary was frowning a lot at her reflection in the mirror. The thing about applying blusher was that you had to get it just right. Too much and you looked consumptive, too little and you looked dirty and as if you hadn't washed your face.

'I mean, when do you think either of us will get married? You know the way Mam's always talking about when the time comes.'

'Well, I hope it comes to me first, I'm the eldest. You're not even to consider doing it ahead of me.'

'No, I have nobody in mind. It's just I'd love to be able to look into the future and see where we'll be in two years' time. Wouldn't it be great if we could have a peep?'

'Well, go to a fortune-teller then if you're that anxious.'

'They don't know anything.' Ria was scornful.

'It depends. If you get the right one they do. A lot of the girls at work found this great one. It would make you shiver the way she knows things.'

'You've never been to her?' Ria was astounded.

'Yes I have actually, just for fun. The others were all going, I didn't want to be the only one disapproving.'

'And?'

'And what?'

'What did she tell you? Don't be mean, go on.' Ria's eyes were dancing.

'She said I would marry within two years…'

'Great, can I be the bridesmaid?'

'And that I'd live in a place surrounded by trees and that his name began with an M, and that we'd both have good health all our lives.'

'Michael, Matthew, Maurice, Marcello?' Ria rolled them all around to try them out. 'How many children?'

'She said no children,' Hilary said.

'You don't believe her, do you?'

'Of course I do, what's the point giving up a week's wages if I don't believe her?'

'You never paid that!'

'She's good. You know, she has the gift.'

'Come on.'

'No, she does have a gift. All kinds of high-up people consult her. They wouldn't if she didn't have the power.'

'And where did she see all this good health and the fellow called M and no children? In tea-leaves?'

'No, on my hand. Look at the little lines under your little finger around the side of your hand. You've got two, I've got none.'

'Hilary, don't be ridiculous. Mam has three lines…'

'And remember there was another baby who died, so that makes three, right.'

'You are serious! You do believe it.'

'You asked so I'm telling you.'

'And everyone who is going to have children has those little lines and those who aren't haven't?'

'You have to know how to look.' Hilary was defensive.

'You have to know how to charge, it seems.' Ria was distressed to see the normally level-headed Hilary so easily taken in.

'It's not that dear when you consider…' Hilary began.

'Ah, Hilary, please. A week's wages to hear that kind of rubbish! Where does she live, in a penthouse?'

'No, a caravan as it happens, on a halting site.'

'You're joking me?'

'True, she doesn't care about money. It's not a racket or a job, it's a gift.'

'Yeah.'

'So it looks like I can do what I like without getting pregnant.' Hilary sounded very confident.

'It might be dangerous to throw out the pill,' said Ria. 'I wouldn't rely totally on Madame Fifi or whatever she's called.'

'Mrs. Connor.'

'Mrs. Connor,' Ria repeated. 'Isn't that amazing. Mam used to consult Saint Ann or someone when she was young. We thought that was mad enough, now it's Mrs. Connor in the halting site.'

'Wait until you need to know something, you'll be along to her like a flash.'

It was very hard to know what a job was going to be like until you were in it and then it was too late.

Hilary had office jobs in a bakery, a laundry and then settled in a school. There wasn't much chance of meeting a husband there, she said, but the pay was a bit better and she got her lunch free, which meant she could save a bit more. She was determined to have something to put towards a house when the time came.

Ria was saving too, but to travel the world. She worked first in the office of a hardware shop, then in a company which made hairdressing supplies. And then settled in a big, busy estate agency. Ria was on the reception desk and answered the phone. It was a world she knew nothing of when she went in, but it was obviously a business with a huge buzz. Prosperity had come to Ireland in the early eighties and the property market was the first to reflect this.

There was huge competition between the various estate agents and Ria found they worked closely as a team.

On the first day she met Rosemary. Slim, blonde, and gorgeous, but as friendly as any of the girls she had ever met at school or secretarial college. Rosemary also lived at home with her mother and sister, so there was an immediate bond. Rosemary was so confident and well up in everything that was happening. Ria assumed that she must be a graduate or someone with huge knowledge of the property market. But no, Rosemary had only worked there for six months; it was her second job.

'There's no point in working anywhere unless we know what it's all about,' Rosemary said. 'It makes it twice as interesting if you know all that's going on.'

It also made Rosemary twice as interesting to all the fellows who worked there. They found it very difficult to get to first base with her: in fact, Ria had heard that there was a sweepstake being run secretly on who would be the first to score. Rosemary had heard this too. She and Ria laughed over it.

'It's only a game,' Rosemary said. 'They don't really want me at all.' Ria was not sure that she was right; almost any man in the office would have been proud to escort Rosemary Ryan. But she was adamant, a career first, fellows later. Ria listened with interest. It was such a different message from the one she got at home, where her mother and Hilary seemed to put a much greater emphasis on the marriage side of things.

Ria's mother said that 1982 was a terrible year for film stars dying. Ingrid Bergman died, and Romy Schneider and Henry Fonda, then there was the terrible accident when Princess Grace was killed. All the people you really wanted to see, they were dying off like flies.

It was also the year that Hilary Johnson got engaged to Martin Moran, a teacher at the school where she worked in the office.

Martin was pale and anxious and originally from the west of Ireland . He always said his father was a small farmer, not just a farmer but a small one. Since Martin was six foot one it was hard to imagine this. He was courteous and obviously very fond of Hilary, yet there was something about him that lacked enthusiasm and fire. He looked slightly worried about things and spoke pessimistically when he came to the house for Sunday lunch.

There was a problem connected with everything. The Pope would get assassinated when he visited England , Martin was sure of it. And when he didn't, it was just lucky and his visit hadn't done all the good that people had hoped it would. The war in the Falklands would have repercussions for Ireland , mark his word. And the trouble in the Middle East was going to get worse, and the IRA bombs in London were only the tip of the iceberg. Teachers' salaries were too low; house prices were too high.

Ria looked at the man her sister was going to marry with wonder.

Hilary, who had once been able to throw away a week's salary on a fortune-teller, was now talking about the cost of having shoes repaired and the folly of making a telephone call outside the cheap times.

Eventually a selection was made and a deposit was paid on a very small house. It was impossible to imagine what the area might look like in the future. At present it was full of mud, cement mixers, diggers, unfinished roads and unmade footpaths. And yet it seemed exactly what her elder sister wanted out of life. Never had Ria seen her so happy.

Hilary was always smiling and holding Martin's hand as they talked, even on very worrying subjects like stamp duty and auctioneers' fees. She kept turning and examining the very small diamond which had been very carefully chosen and bought from a jeweller where Martin's cousin worked so that a good price had been arranged.

Hilary was excited about the wedding, which would be two days before her twenty-fourth birthday. For Hilary the time had come. She celebrated it by manic frugality. She and Martin vied with each other to save money on the whole project.

A winter wedding was much more sensible. Hilary could wear a cream-coloured suit and hat, something that could be worn again and again, and eventually dyed a dark colour and worn still further. As a wedding feast they would have a small lunch in a Dublin hotel, just family. Martin's father and brothers, being small farmers, could not afford to be away from the land for any longer than a day. It would be impossible to be anything but pleased for her. It was so obviously what Hilary wanted. But Ria knew that it was nothing at all like what she wanted herself.

Ria wore a bright scarlet coat to the wedding, and a red velvet hairband and bow in her black curly hair. She must have been one of the most colourful bridesmaids at the drabbest wedding in Europe, she thought.

When Monday came she decided to wear her scarlet bridesmaid's coat to the office. Rosemary was amazed. 'Hey, you look terrific. I've never seen you dressed up before, Ria. Seriously, you should get interested in clothes, you know. What a pity we have nowhere to go to lunch and show you off, we mustn't waste this.'

'Come on, Rosemary, it's only clothes.' Ria was embarrassed. She felt now that she must have been dressed like a tramp before.

'No, I'm not joking. You must always wear those knock-them-dead colours, I bet you were the hit of the wedding!'

'I'd like to think so, but maybe I was a bit too loud, made them colour-blind. You've no idea what Martin's people were like.'

'Like Martin?' Rosemary guessed.

'Compared to them Martin's a ball of fire,' Ria said.

'Look, I can't believe you're the same person as yesterday.' Rosemary stood in her immaculate lilac-coloured knitted suit, her make-up perfect and amazed admiration written all over her.

'Well, you've really put it up to me. Now I'll have to get a whole new wardrobe.' Ria twirled around once more before taking off her scarlet coat and caught the eye of the new man in the office.

She had heard there was a Lynch coming from the Cork branch. He had obviously arrived. He wasn't tall, about her own height. He was handsome, and he had blue eyes and straight fair hair that fell into his eyes. He had a smile that lit up the room. 'Hallo, I'm Danny Lynch,' he said. Ria looked at him, embarrassed to have been caught pirouetting around in her new coat. 'Aren't you just gorgeous?' he said. She felt a very odd sensation in her throat, as if she had been running up a hill and couldn't catch her breath.

Rosemary spoke, which was just as well because Ria would not have been able to answer at all.

'Well hallo there, Danny Lynch,' she said with a bit of a smile. 'And you are very welcome to our office. You know, we were told that there was a Mr Lynch arriving, but why did we think it was going to be some old guy?'

Ria felt a pang of jealousy as she had never before felt about her friend. Why did Rosemary always know exactly what to say, how to be funny and flattering and warm at the same time?

'I'm Rosemary, this is Ria, and we are the workforce that keeps this place going, so you have to be very nice to us.'

'Oh I will,' Danny promised.

And Ria knew he would probably join the sweepstake as to who would score first with Rosemary. Probably would win, as well. Oddly he seemed to be talking to Ria when he spoke, but maybe she was just imagining it. Rosemary went on, 'We were just looking for somewhere to go out and celebrate Ria's new coat.'

'Great! Well, we have the excuse, all we need is the place and to know how long a lunch break so that I don't make a bad impression on my first day.' His extraordinary smile went from one to the other; they were the only three people in the world.

Ria couldn't say anything; her mouth was too dry.

'If we're out and back in under an hour then I think we'll do well,' said Rosemary.

'So now it's only where?' Danny Lynch said, looking straight at Ria. This time there were only two of them in the world. She still couldn't speak.

'There's an Italian place across the road,' Rosemary said. 'It would cut down on time getting there and back.'

'Let's go there,' said Danny Lynch, without taking his eyes away from Ria Johnson.

Danny was twenty-three. His uncle had been an auctioneer. Well, he had been a bit of everything in a small town, a publican, an undertaker, but he also had an auctioneer's licence and that's where Danny had gone to work when he left school. They had sold grain and fertiliser and hay as well as cattle and small farms, but as Ireland changed, property became important. And then he had gone to Cork City and he loved it all, and now he had just got this job in Dublin .

He was as excited as a child on Christmas Day, and Rosemary and Ria were carried along with him all the way. He said he hated being in the office and loved being out with clients, but then didn't everyone? He knew it would take time before he'd get that kind of freedom in Dublin . He had been to Dublin often but never lived there.

And where was he staying? Rosemary had never seemed so interested in anyone before. Ria watched glumly. Every man in the office would have killed to see the light in the eyes, the interest in every word. She never enquired where any of her other colleagues lived, she didn't seem to know if they had any accommodation at all. But with Danny it was different. 'Tell us now that you don't live miles and miles away, do you?' Rosemary had her head on one side. No man on earth could resist giving Rosemary his address and finding out where she lived too. But Danny didn't seem to regard it as a personal exchange; it was part of the general conversation. He spoke looking from one to the other as he told them how he had fallen on his feet. He had really had the most amazing bit of luck. There was this man he had met, a sort of madman really called Sean O'Brien, old and confused. A real recluse. And he had inherited a great big house in Tara Road, and he wasn't capable of doing it up, and he didn't want all the bother and the discussing of it and all, so what he really wanted was a few fellows to go in and live there. Fellows were easier than girls, they didn't want things neat and clean and organised. He smiled apologetically at them as if to say he knew that fellows were hopeless.

So that's where Danny and two other lads lived. They had a bedsitter each, and kept an eye on the place until poor old Sean decided what he was going to do. Suited everybody.

What kind of a house was it, the girls wanted to know?

Tara Road was very higgledy-piggledy. Big houses with gardens full of trees, small houses facing right on to the street. Number 16 was a great old house, Danny said. Falling down, damp, shabby now. Poor Sean O'Brien's old uncle must have been a bit of a no-hoper like Sean himself, it must have been a great house once. You got a feel for houses, didn't you? Otherwise why be in this business at all?

Ria sat with her chin in her hands listening to Danny and looking at him and looking at him. He was so enthusiastic. The place had a big overrun garden at the back. It was one of those houses that just put out its arms and hugged you.

Rosemary must have kept the conversation going and called for the bill. They walked across the road back to work and Ria sat down at her desk. Things don't happen like this in real life. It's only a crush or an infatuation. He's a perfectly ordinary small guy with a line of chatter. He is exactly like this to everyone else. So why on earth did she feel that he was so special, and that if he got to share all his plans and dreams with anyone else she would kill the other person? This wasn't the kind of way people went on. Then she remembered her sister's wedding two days ago. That wasn't the way people went on either.

Before the office closed Ria went over to Danny Lynch's desk. 'I'm going to be twenty-two tomorrow,' she said. 'I wondered…' Then she got stuck.

He helped her out. 'Are you having a party?'

'Not really, no.'

'Then can we celebrate it together? Today the coat, tomorrow being twenty-two. Who knows what we'll have to celebrate by Wednesday?'

And then Ria knew that it wasn't a crush or an infatuation, it was love. The kind of thing she had only read about, heard about, sung about or seen at the cinema. And it had come to find her in her own office.

At first Ria tried to keep Danny to herself, not wanting to tell anyone about him or to share him with other people. She clung to him when they said goodbye as if she never wanted him to leave her arms.

'You're sending me very funny signals, my Maria,' he said to her. 'You want to be with me and yet you don't. Or am I just a thick man who can't understand?' His head was on one side, looking at her quizzically.

'That's exactly the way I feel,' she said simply. 'Very confused.'

'Well we can simplify it all, can't we?'

'Not really. You see for me it would be a very big step. I don't want to make a production out of it all, but you see I haven't with anyone else. Yet I mean…' She bit her lip. She didn't dare tell him that she wouldn't sleep with him until she knew that he loved her. It would be putting words in his mouth.

Danny Lynch held her face in his hands. I love you, Ria, you are utterly adorable.'

'Do you love me?'

'You know I do.'

The next time he asked her to go back to the big rambling house she would go. But, oddly, he didn't ask her at all in the days and nights that followed. He told her about himself, his time at school where he was picked on because he was small and how his elder brothers taught him to fight. His brothers were in London , both of them. One married, one living with a girl. They didn't come home much. Usually went to Spain or Greece on their holidays now.

His parents lived in the same house as they had always done. They were very self-contained, went for long walks with their red setter. She felt that he didn't get on well with his father, but even though Ria ached to ask she didn't probe. Men hated that kind of intimate chat. She and Rosemary knew this from reading magazine articles and even from their own experience. Fellows didn't like being questioned about feelings. So she did not ask him about his childhood and why he spoke so little of his parents and rarely went to see them.

Danny didn't ask questions about her family, so she forced herself not to prattle about how her father had died when she was eight, how her mother was still bitter and disappointed by the memory of him. And how dull Hilary and Martin's wedding had been.

There was no shortage of things to talk about in those heady days. Danny did ask about what music she liked, and what she read and where she had been on holidays, and what films she went to see, and what kind of houses she liked. He showed her books about houses, and pointed out things that she would never have noticed. He would love to own the old house, Number 16 Tara Road, he told her. He would do it up and take such care of it. He would put so much love into the house that the house would return his love.

It was wonderful having Rosemary to talk to. At first Ria held back. She was so afraid that if Rosemary smiled just once more, Danny would leave Ria's side and join her, but as the days went by she began to have a little more confidence. And then she told Rosemary everything, where they went, what he was interested in, about his strange lonely family in the country.

Rosemary listened with interest. 'You've got it very bad,' she said eventually.

'Do you think it's foolish, just a crush or something? You know a lot about these things.' Ria wished for an oval face and high cheek-bones so desperately it almost hurt.

'He seems to have it just as bad,' Rosemary pronounced.

'He says he loves me, certainly,' Ria said. She was answering Rosemary's question but she didn't want to sound too confident.

'Of course he loves you, that was obvious the very first day,' Rosemary said, twirling her long blonde hair around her finger. 'It's the most romantic thing I've ever seen. I can't tell you how envious we all are. Total love at first sight and the whole office knows. What nobody knows is are you sleeping with him?'

'No,' said Ria firmly. And then, in a much smaller voice, 'Not yet.'

Ria's mother wondered was she ever going to meet him.

'Soon, Mam. Don't rush things, please.'

I'm not rushing anything, Ria. I'm just pointing out that you have been going out with this fellow every single night, week after week, and common courtesy would suggest that you might invite him home with you once in a while.'

'I will, Mam. Honestly.'

'I mean, Hilary brought Martin back to meet us, didn't she?'

'Oh she did, Mam.'

'So?'

'So, I will.'

'Are you going home for Christmas?' Ria asked Danny.

'Here is home.' He embraced all of Dublin in a gesture.

'Yes, I know. I meant to your parents' home.'

'I don't know yet.'

'Won't they expect you to go back?'

'They'll leave it to me.'

She wanted to ask about his brothers over in England and what kind of a family was it if they didn't all gather around a table for a turkey on Christmas Day. But she knew she must not sound too inquisitive. 'Sure,' she said unconvincingly.

Danny took both her hands in his. 'Listen to me, Ria. It will be different when you and I have a home. It will be a real home, one that people will want to come running back to. That's what I see ahead for us. Don't you?'

'Oh yes, Danny,' she said, with her face glowing. She did understand. The real Danny was a loving person like herself. She was the luckiest woman in the world.

'Ask him for Christmas Day so that we can get a look at him,' her mother begged.

'No, Mam. Thank you, but no.'

'Is he going back down the country to his own people?'

I'm not sure, he's not sure.'

'He sounds a real fly-by-night to me,' her mother sniffed. 'No, Mam, he's not that.'

'Well, a mystery man… he won't even put in an appearance to give the time of day to his girlfriend's family.' 'He will, Mam, when the time comes,' Ria said.

Someone always behaved badly at the office party.

This year it was Orla King, a girl who had drunk half a bottle of vodka before the festivities had even started. She tried to sing, 'In the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight'.

'Get her out before the top guys see her,' Danny hissed.

It was easier said than done. Ria tried to urge Orla to come with her to the ladies' room.

'Piss off!' was the response.

Danny was there. 'Hey sweetheart, you and I have never danced,' he said.

She looked at him with interest. 'That's true,' she agreed.

'Why don't we go out and dance a bit where there's more room?'

'Yesh,' said the girl, surprised and pleased.

In seconds Danny had her out on the street. Ria brought her coat. The cold fresh air made her feel sick. They directed her to a quiet corner.

'I want to go home,' she cried afterwards.

'Come on, we'll walk you,' Danny said.

Between them they supported her. From time to time Orla tried a chorus of 'The lion sleeps tonight' without much success.

When they let her in the door of her flat she looked at them in surprise. 'How did I get home?' she asked with interest.

'You're fine, sweetheart,' Danny said soothingly.

'Will you come in with me?' Orla ignored Ria entirely.

'No, honey, see you tomorrow,' he said, and they were gone.

'You saved her job, getting her out of there,' Ria said as they walked back to the office party. 'She's such a clown… I hope she knows how much she owes you.'

'She's not a clown, she's just young and lonely,' he said.

Ria got a stab of jealousy as sharp as a real pain. Orla was eighteen and pretty; even drunk and with a tear-stained face she looked well. Suppose Danny was attracted to her? No, don't suppose that.

Back at the party they hadn't been missed. 'That was very smart of you, Danny,' Rosemary said with approval. 'And even smarter, you missed the speeches.'

'Anything we should know?'

'Oh, that we had a profitable year and there would be a bonus. Onwards and upwards sort of thing.'

Rosemary looked magnificent, with her blonde hair swept up in a jewelled comb, a white satin blouse, tight black skirt and those long slim legs. For the second time that evening Ria felt a pang of envy. She was dumpy and fuzzy-looking. How could she keep a man as gorgeous as Danny Lynch? She was foolish even to try.

He whispered in her ear, 'Let's circulate, talk to the suits for a bit and then get away.'

She watched him joke easily with the senior figures in the agency, nod respectfully to the managing director, listen courteously to their wives. Danny had only been there a matter of weeks. Already they liked him and thought he would do well.

'I'm getting the Christmas Eve bus tomorrow.'

'I'm sure it'll be nice, lots of returned emigrants and everything,' she said.

'I’ll miss you,' he said.

'Me too.'

'I’ll hitch-hike back the day after Christmas… there's no buses.'

'That's great.'

'I wonder could I come and see you at home and, you know, meet your mother maybe?'

He was asking, she hadn't dragged him or forced him.

'That would be great. Come and have lunch with us on the Tuesday.' All she had to do now was force herself not to be ashamed of her mother and her sister and her dreary brother-in-law.

It wasn't a military inspection on Tuesday. It was only lunch. They were going to have soup and sandwiches.

Ria tried to see their home through Danny's eyes. It was not the kind of place where he would have liked to live, a corner house in a long road of the big estate. He's coming to see me not the house, she told herself. Her mother said she hoped he wouldn't stay after three because there was a great movie starting on the television then. Ria gritted her teeth and said no, indeed, she was sure that he wouldn't.

Hilary said she was sure he was used to fancier meals but he'd have to put up with this like anyone else. With a huge effort Ria said that he would be delighted to put up with it. Martin read the paper and didn't look up at all.

She wondered would Danny bring a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates or a plant. Or maybe nothing at all. Three times she changed her dress. That was too smart, this was too dowdy. She was struggling into the third outfit when she heard the doorbell ring.

He had arrived.

'Hallo Nora, I'm Danny,' she heard him say. Oh God, he was calling her mother by her first name. Martin always called her Mrs. J. Mam would just hate this.

But she heard in her mother's voice the kind of pleased response that Danny always got. 'You're very, very welcome,' she said, in a tone that hadn't been used in that house for as long as Ria could remember.

And the magic worked with Hilary and Martin too. Eager to hear about their wedding, interested in the school where they worked, relaxed and easy-going. Ria watched the whole thing with amazement.

And he had brought no wine, chocolates or flowers. Instead he gave them a game of Trivial Pursuit. Ria's heart sank when she saw it. This was not a family where games were played. But she had reckoned without Danny. Their heads were bent over the questions. Nora knew all the ones about film stars and Martin shone in general knowledge.

'What hope have I against a teacher?' Danny groaned in despair.

He said he was leaving long before they wanted him to go. 'Ria promised to come and see the place I live,' he said apologetically. I want us to go while there's still light.'

'He's gorgeous,' Hilary whispered.

'Very nice manners,' her mother hissed.

And then they were free.

'That was a lovely lunch,' Danny said as they waited for the bus to Tara Road. And that was all he would say. There would be no analysis, no defining. Men like Danny were straightforward and not complicated.

And then they were there. And they stood together in the overgrown front garden and looked up at the house in Tara Road.

'Look at the shape of the house,' Danny begged her. 'See how perfect the proportions are. It was built in 1870, a gentleman's residence.' The steps up to the hall door were huge blocks of granite. 'Look how even they were, they were perfectly matched.' The bow windows had all the original woodwork. 'Those shutters are over a hundred years old. The leaded glass over the door has no cracks in it. This house was a jewel,' Danny Lynch said.

There he was living in it, well, more or less camping in a room in it.

'Let's remember today, the first day that we walked together into this house,' he said. His eyes were bright. He was just as sentimental and romantic as she was in so many ways. He was about to open the peeling front door with his key and paused to kiss her. 'This will be our home, Ria, won't it? Tell me you love it too.' He meant it. He wanted to marry her. Danny Lynch, a man who could have any woman. And he meant he was going to own a huge house like this. A boy of twenty-three with no assets. Only rich people could buy houses like this, even one in such poor repair.

Ria didn't want to pour cold water on his dreams, and particularly she didn't want to sound too like her sister Hilary with her new obsession with the cost of everything. But this was fantasy. 'It's not possible to own a place like this surely?' she said.

'When you come in and see it you'll know this is where we are going to live. And we'll find a way to buy it.' He talked her through the hallway with its high ceiling. He pointed out the original mouldings on the ceiling to take her eyes off the bicycles clogging the hallway. He showed her the gentle curve of the stairs, and made no mention of the rotting floorboards. They passed the big room with its folding doors. They couldn't go into it. Sean O'Brien, the eccentric landlord, was using it as some kind of storeroom for giant-size containers.

They went down the steps to the huge kitchen with its old black range. There was a side door here out to the garden, and numerous storage rooms, pantries and sculleries. The magnitude of it all was too great for Ria to take in. This boy with the laughing eyes really thought that he and she could find the money and skills to do up a house of this size.

If it were on their books back at the office it would have the customary warnings printed all over it. In need of extensive renovation, suitable for structural remodelling, ready for inventive redesign. Only a builder or developer or someone with real money would buy a property like this.

The kitchen had an uneven tiled floor. A small cheap tabletop cooker had been laid on the old black range.

'I’ll make us some coffee,' Danny said. 'And in years to come we'll remember the first time we had coffee here together in Tara Road…' At that moment, as if on some kind of cue, the kitchen was suddenly lit up with one of those rays of watery winter sunshine. It came slanting in at the window through all the briars and brambles. It was like a sign.

'Yes, yes I will remember my first coffee with you in Tara Road,' Ria said.

'We'll be able to tell people it was a lovely sunny day, December the 28th 1982,' said Danny.

As it happened it also turned out to be the date of the first time Ria Johnson ever made love to anybody. And as she lay beside Danny in the small narrow bed she wished she could see into the future. Just for a moment. A quick look to see would they live here together for years and have children and make it the home of their dreams.

She wondered if Hilary's friend Mrs. Connor, the fortune-teller on the halting site, would know. She smiled at the thought of going to consult her. Danny stirred from his sleep on her shoulder, and saw her smiling.

'Are you happy?' he asked.

'Never more so.'

'I love you, Ria. I'll never let you down,' he promised.

She was the luckiest woman in the country. No, she told herself, think generously, who was luckier anywhere? Make that the world.

The next weeks went by in a blur.

They knew that Sean O'Brien would be glad to get rid of the place.

They knew that he would prefer to deal with them, young people who wouldn't make a fuss about the damp and the roof, and would not tut-tut over the decay. But they still had to give him what the house was worth. So how could they get it together?

There were sheets of paper building up into piles as they did their sums. Four bedsitters upstairs would bring in enough to pay the mortgage. It would have to be done very quietly of course. No need to burden the planning authorities with any details, or indeed the tax people either. Then they would approach the bank with their proposition. Ria had a thousand pounds saved; Danny had two-and-a-half thousand. They had both seen couples with less than they had get their hands on property. It all depended on timing and presentation. They would do it.

They invested the price of a bottle of whiskey when inviting the landlord to discuss the future. Sean O'Brien proved to be no trouble. He told them again and again the story they knew already. He had inherited the house when his uncle died some years back. He didn't want to live in it, he had a small cottage by a lake in Wicklow where he fished and drank with congenial people. That's where he wanted to be. He'd only held on to Tara Road in case there was going to be a property boom. And indeed there had been. It was worth much more now than it had been ten years ago, so he had been clever, hadn't he? A lot of people said he was an eejit but that wasn't so. Danny and Ria nodded and praised him and filled his glass.

Sean O'Brien said he had never been able to keep the house up to any standard. It was too much effort and he didn't have the skills to restore it and let it properly to people who would look after it. That was why he had been happy to hand it to young fellows like Danny and his pals. But he took their point that it wasn't going to be such a great investment if it kept falling down and deteriorating the way it was.

He thought that the going rate would be in the neighbourhood of seventy thousand pounds. He had asked around and this is what he had heard. However he would take sixty thousand for a quick sale, and he'd get rid of all the old furniture and containers and boxes that he was storing for friends. Danny could have it when he produced sixty thousand.

It would have been a bargain for anyone with the money to restore it. For Danny and Ria it was impossible. For a start they would need fifteen per cent of the price as a deposit. And nine thousand pounds was like nine million to them.

Ria was prepared to change the dream, not Danny. He didn't fret or complain. He just wouldn't let go of the idea. It was too good a house, too beautiful a place to let slip from their hands into the possession of some builder. Now that Sean O'Brien had faced the notion of selling, he would want to sell.

It was hard to keep their minds on the sales they had to handle in the office. Doubly hard because every day they were dealing with people who could buy Tara Road without any trouble at all.

People like Barney McCarthy, for example. The big bluff ; businessman who had made his money in England as a builder and who bought and sold houses almost on a whim. He was in the process of selling a large mansion that had been a mistake. One of his rare mistakes.

Barney was unexpectedly honest as to why it was a mistake. He had seen himself momentarily as a country squire, living in a huge Georgian house with a tree-lined avenue. The house was indeed elegant but it turned out to be too remote, too far from Dublin . It had been an ill-considered decision and he was prepared to lose a little on the whole deal, but not a lot. He needed to sell this white elephant.

He had already bought the comfortable big square family residence that he should have bought in the first place. His wife was settled there. He was involved in buying pubs and investing in golf courses but the issue that was uppermost was to sell the mansion which now seemed just like a monument to his folly. He was a man who cared about the public image of himself.

He also loved to drop the names of famous people he had met, and in the estate agency they were greatly in awe of him. But they had a huge problem in selling this property at anything like the price he expected. Quite simply Barney had spent too much on it and there were just not the buyers. He was not going to see a profit, and he was a man who hated to take a humiliating loss on this deal. Senior partners in the estate agency, smooth-talking men, pointed out to Barney that the upkeep of such a house was enormous and that they could count on the fingers of one hand the likely buyers in Ireland . They had looked outside the country too, but with no success.

There was a conference in the agency about it. Danny and Ria sat with the others listening to the worrying news that Barney might be taking his business elsewhere. Ria's mind was far from Barney's problems and more on their own. But Danny was thinking. He opened his mouth to say something and then changed his mind.

'What is it, Danny?' He was popular and successful. They wanted to hear what he would say.

'No, it's nothing. You've thought of all the angles,' Danny said.

And the conversation went around aimlessly in the same circle for another half an hour.

Ria knew that Danny had thought of something. She knew from the way his eyes danced. After the meeting he whispered that he had to get out of the office. She was to cover for him.

'If you pray to anyone, pray now,’ he said.

'Tell me, Danny. Tell me.'

'I can't, there isn't time. Say I got a phone call… from the nuns down the road. Anything.'

'I can't sit here and not know.'

'I've got an idea how Barney can sell his house.'

'Why didn't you tell them?'

'I'm telling him. That's how we'll get our money. If I tell them we'll only get a pat on the back.'

'Oh God, Danny. Be careful, they could sack you.'

'If I'm right it won't matter,' he said. And he was gone.

Rosemary called Ria. 'Come into the ladies' room. I want to tell you something.'

'I can't. I'm waiting for a call.' Ria couldn't leave her post in case he rang, or needed her co-operation.

'Orla can cover for you, come on, it's important,' Rosemary said.

'No, tell me here, there's no one around.'

'Well, it's very hush-hush.'

'Speak in a whisper, then.'

'I'm leaving, I've got a new job.' Rosemary pulled back, waiting to see the amazement and shock on Ria's face. She saw very little reaction at all. Perhaps she hadn't explained it properly.

She explained it all again. It had just been agreed. It was very exciting. She would tell them here in the agency this evening. She had been offered a better job in a printing company. It wasn't far away; they could still have lunch. Ria barely listened, she was so sick with worry.

Rosemary was not unnaturally offended. 'Well, if you can't be bothered to listen,' she said.

'I'm sorry, Rosemary, really I am. It's just that I have something on my mind.'

'God, you're so bloody dull, Ria. You've nothing on your mind but Danny this, Danny that. It's like as if you were his mother. Do you know that you haven't the remotest interest in anyone else these days!'

Ria was stricken. 'Look, I can't tell you how sorry I am. Please forgive me. Tell me again.'

'No, I won't tell you again. You don't care if I go or stay. You're still not listening to me. You've your eyes on the door in case he's coming back in. Where is he, by the way?'

'With the nuns, they rang.'

'No, they didn't. I was talking to them an hour ago. There's no movement there, they have to wait for some Mother General to say yes from Rome .'

'I’ll tell you all about it later. Please tell me about your new job, please.'

'Ria, will you shut up,' Rosemary hissed. 'I haven't told them yet and there you go bleating about my new job. I think you're unhinged.'

She saw Danny come in the door, walking quickly, lightly, as he always did. She knew by his face that it was all right. He slid into his desk and gave her a thumbs-up sign. Immediately she dialled his phone extension.

'Don't say you were with the nuns. Apparently there's nothing happening on that sale,' she whispered.

'Thanks, you're brilliant.'

'What happens now, Danny?'

'We sit tight for a week. Then all systems go.'

Ria hung up. She thought the day would never end, the hands of the clock were crawling past. Rosemary went in and came out having given her notice. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. Across the room Danny seemed to be perfectly normal in his conversations, chatting to people, laughing, working on the phone. Only Ria, who knew his every heartbeat, could see the suppressed excitement.

They went to the pub across the road and without asking her what she wanted he bought them both a large brandy.

'I told Barney McCarthy he should put in a sound-proofed recording studio, with all that stuff on the walls. Cost him another twenty thousand.'

'Why on earth…?'

'He could sell it to pop stars. It's the kind of a place they'd want, carve out a helicopter pad as well.'

'And he thought it was a good idea?' Ria was weak.

'He asked why did those swanky auctioneers I worked for not come up with this idea.'

'What did you say?'

'I said they would probably think it was a bit of a young man's idea, that they were more conservative. And Ria, wait for this, I looked him in the eye and I said, 'And another thing, Mr McCarthy, I thought if I came to you directly with this idea that maybe I could sell it for you myself.’ Danny sipped his brandy. 'He asked me was I trying to take his business away from my employers. I said yes, I was, and he said he'd give me a week.'

'Oh God, Danny.'

'I know. Isn't it wonderful? Well, we can't do it from their place so I'll develop flu tomorrow, after I've taken all the addresses and contacts I need home. I've begun to make a list already and then I'll get on the phone. I may need you to send some faxes from the office for me.'

'We'll be killed.'

'Don't be ridiculous, of course we won't. This is what business is about.'

'How much will… ?'

'If I sell Barney's bloody house by next week we'll have the deposit on Tara Road and more. Then we can go to the bank, honeybun. Then we can go to the bank.'

'But they'll sack you, you won't have a job.'

'If I have Barney McCarthy's business any auctioneers in Ireland will take me. Just a week of iron-hard nerve, Ria, and we're there.'

'Iron nerve,' she agreed.

'And remember this day, sweetheart. March the 25th 1983, the day our luck changed.'

'Will Danny be back for my going-away drinks?' Rosemary asked Ria.

'Yes, I think his flu will be better by then,' Ria said loudly.

'Sorry, it slipped out. How is he, by the way?'

'Fine, he rings at night.' Ria didn't say how often he telephoned during the day too, asking for information.

'And did he find what he's looking for?' Rosemary asked.

Ria thought for a moment. 'He sounds cheerful enough. I think he is just in the process of finding it,' she said.

An hour previously Danny had rung to say that Barney's forces had sound-proofed a wine cellar already and the equipment was being installed today. Tomorrow the manager of a legendary pop group was flying over to inspect it; Danny would be travelling with him. It was looking very good.

And it was very good. Barney McCarthy got his price. And Danny Lynch got his commission. And Sean O'Brien got his sixty thousand pounds. And Danny told his employers what he had done, and that he would leave as soon as they wanted him to. They invited him to stay and keep Barney's business with them, but Danny said it would be awkward. They would always be watching him, he would feel uneasy.

They parted on good terms, as Danny Lynch did with everyone and everything in life.

They were like excited children as they wandered about the house planning this and that.

'This front room could be something really special,' Danny said. Now that the boxes and containers that held the secrets of poor old Sean O'Brien and his friends had been moved out, anyone could see what perfect proportions it had: the high ceiling, the tall windows, the big fireplace.

It didn't matter at all that a naked light bulb hung on an old knotted flex from the middle of the ceiling, or that some window-panes had been broken in the past and replaced with cheap and irregular bits of glass.

The stained and chipped mantelpiece could be renewed and made to look as it must once have looked when it was a gentleman's residence.

'We'll get a gorgeous soft wool Indian carpet,' Danny said. 'And look here, beside the fireplace do you know what we'll have—one of those big Japanese Imari vases. Perfect for a room like this.'

Ria looked at him with stunned admiration.

'How on earth do you know all this, Danny? You sound as if you'd done a course in fine arts or something.'

'I look at places, sweetheart. I'm in and out of houses like this all day. I see what people with taste and style have done, I just look, that's all.'

'A lot of people look but they don't see properly.'

'We'll have such a good time doing it up.' His eyes were shining.

Ria nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

The excitement of it all was nearly too much for her. Sometimes she felt dizzy, physically dizzy with the magnitude of what they were taking on.

The pregnancy test was positive. The timing could not be worse. As she lay awake at night, either in her mother's home or in the shambles that was now Tara Road, she rehearsed how she would tell him that she was pregnant.

The fear that he might not want the child was so great it stopped her opening her mouth. The days went by and Ria felt she was acting everywhere and to everyone, and that she had long ceased to be a real person with normal responses.

When she did tell him it was completely by accident. Danny said that the hall was much bigger than they had thought now that they had got the bicycles out of it and into the shed. Maybe they should have a painting party at the weekend, get everyone to do a bit of wall each. It wouldn't be permanent or anything but it might give them a bit of pride in the place.

'What do you think, sweetheart? I know the smell of paint will make us all sick for a day or two but it will be worth it.'

'I'm going to have a baby,' she said suddenly.

'What?'

'Yes, I mean it. Oh Jesus, Danny, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry now in the middle of all this.' And she burst into tears.

He laid down his coffee cup and came over to hold her tight. 'Ria, Ria. Stop, stop. Don't cry.'

But she went on sobbing and shaking in his arms. He stroked her hair and soothed her as you would a child. 'Shush, shush, Ria. I'm here, it's all right.'

'No, it's not all right, it couldn't be worse. What a time for this to happen. I don't know how it happened.'

'I do, and it was all lovely,' he said.

'Oh Danny, please don't make a joke about it, it's a nightmare. I've never been so upset. I couldn't tell you, not with all this going on.'

'Why is it a nightmare?' he asked.

Oh please, please, may he not say that an abortion was no trouble. That he had the money now. They could go to London at the weekend. Please may he not say that. Because Ria knew that she didn't trust herself. She might do it just to keep him. Then she would hate him as well as loving him, which would be absurd but she could see it happening.

He was smiling his big wide smile. 'Where's the nightmare, Ria my sweet, sweet heart? We wanted children. We were going to get married. So it happened sooner rather than later. That's all.'

She looked at him in wonder. In as much as she could understand anything, he really did seem overjoyed.

'Danny…'

'What were all the tears about?'

'I thought, I thought…'

'Shush.'

'Rosemary? Can we have lunch? I've some marvellous news.'

'What makes me think it has to do with lover boy?' Rosemary laughed.

'Lunch or not?'

'Of course.'

They went to the Italian restaurant where they had gone that day with Danny last November—only a few months ago but imagine all that had happened since.

Rosemary looked better than ever. How it was that no drop of oil or spill of sauce would ever land on her light grey cashmere sweater Ria would never know.

'Well, tell me,' Rosemary said. 'Stop pretending to look at the menu.'

'Danny and I are getting married, and we want you to be the bridesmaid.' Rosemary was speechless. 'Yes, isn't it wonderful! We own the house and we thought it silly to wait any longer.'

'Married?' Rosemary said. 'Well, aren't you the dark horse. All I can say is well done, Ria. Well done!'

Ria felt slightly that she would have preferred Rosemary to say that this was great; 'well done' sort of implied that she had won by trickery. 'Yes. Aren't you happy for us?'

'Of course I am.' Rosemary hugged her. 'Stunned but very happy for you. You got the man of your dreams and a beautiful house as well.'

Ria decided to play it down a little. 'There's years of work to get it right. No one else but us would be as mad as to take it on.'

'Nonsense, it's worth a fortune; you and Danny know that. You certainly moved fast on that one, you got the bargain of the century.' She spoke with true praise.

Ria felt a stab of guilt as if they had somehow conned poor Sean O'Brien and given him less than he deserved.

'Nobody's seen the house yet but you. I'm almost afraid of what the families will say when they do.' Ria could see the jealousy in Hilary's face already.

'Nonsense, they'll be dead impressed. What are they like, Danny's parents?'

'I haven't met them yet, but I gather not at all like Danny,' Ria said.

Rosemary made a face. 'Still, maybe the brothers are okay. Are they coming home from England ? I might make off with one of them. Bridesmaid's privilege, you know!'

'No mention of them coming back.'

'Never mind. I'll find something to entertain me. Now, down to serious things. What will we wear?'

'Rosemary?'

'What?'

'You know I'm pregnant?'

'I thought you might be. But that's good, isn't it? It's what you want?'

'Yes, it is.'

'So?'

'So, we shouldn't really be thinking of big white weddings and veils and all that stuff. And anyway, his family is very quiet, low key. It wouldn't work.'

'What would Danny like? Isn't that all that matters? Would he like the whole works or a few sandwiches in the pub?'

Ria didn't even pause to think. 'He'd like the full works,' she said.

'Then that is exactly what we'll have,' said Rosemary, getting out pen and paper and starting to make a list.

She met Barney McCarthy before she met Danny's parents. She was invited to lunch. In fact it was a little like a royal command.

Danny was excited. 'You'll like him, Ria, he's marvellous. And he'll love you, I know he will.'

'I'm nervous of going to that restaurant, it will all be in French and we won't know what all the things are.'

'Nonsense, just be yourself. And never apologise or write yourself down. We are as good as anyone else. Barney knows that, that's how he got on, by knowing it about himself.' She noticed with a little stab of worry that Danny seemed more anxious about her meeting with Barney than with his parents. 'Oh we'll go down to them any time,' he said.

Nora Johnson was amazed at the news. 'You do surprise me,' she said twice.

Ria was irritated by this response. 'Why do I surprise you, Mam? You know I love him, you know he loves me. What else would we do but get married?'

'Oh certainly, certainly.'

'What have you against him, Mam? You said you liked him, you admired the fact that he bought a big house and is planning to do it up. He's got good prospects, we won't be penniless. What objection do you have to him?'

'He's too good-looking,' her mother said.

Hilary was no more enthusiastic. 'You'd want to be careful of him, Ria.'

'Thank you very much, Hilary. When you were marrying Martin I didn't say that to you. I said I was delighted for you and I was sure you were going to be very happy.'

'But that was true.' Hilary was smug in her excellent choice of a mate.

'It's true for me, too,' Ria cried.

'Yes, Ria. But you'd have to watch him; he's a high-flyer. He's not going to be content with earning a living like normal people do; he'll want the moon. It's written all over him.'

Danny, who never fussed about anything, went to great trouble discussing what Ria should wear when meeting Barney McCarthy.

Eventually it made her impatient. 'Listen, you were the one who said I should be myself. I'll wear something nice and smart and I'll be myself. It's not a fashion parade or a beauty contest, it's a lunch.' Her eyes flashed with the kind of spirit she hadn't shown for a while.

He looked at her admiringly. 'That's my girl, that's the way to go,' he said. She wore the scarlet coat she had bought for Hilary's wedding, and a new silk scarf that Rosemary had helped her to choose.

Barney was a large square man of about forty-five in a very well-cut suit. He wore an expensive watch and he carried himself well and confidently. Slightly balding now, he had the face of a working man, someone who had been out in all weathers. He had an easy manner; he was neither impressed by the restaurant nor trying to put it down. They talked effortlessly all three of them.

Still, despite the pleasant, inconsequential conversation, Ria couldn't avoid the feeling that she was being given an interview. And with a sense of satisfaction after the coffee she realised that she had done very well.

Orla King was the one who told Ria that people in the office didn't really like her working there any more. Not now that she was engaged to marry Danny Lynch. People said that she would be telling him everything, giving him leads.

'I had no idea.' Ria was shocked.

'Well, I'm only telling you because you two were very nice to me when I was being an eejit last Christmas.' Orla was all right. She couldn't help looking so good. Ria wondered why she had felt so stupidly jealous of her.

Danny told Barney McCarthy that Ria had decided to leave the company, to go before they asked her to.

Barney was unexpectedly sympathetic 'That's very hard on her. She was in that firm long before you went in and rocked the boat.'

'That's true,' Danny said, surprised. He hadn't thought of it that way.

'So is she upset?'

'A little, but you know Ria, she's out looking for another job already.' He was proud of her.

'Maybe I'd have a job for her,' said Barney McCarthy.

One of his business interests was a new dress-hire firm. A very classy outfit called Tolly's'. They took Ria immediately.

'Should I not have a week's trial or something?' Ria asked Gertie, the tall pale manageress with her long dark hair tied in a simple ribbon behind her neck.

'No need,' said Gertie with a grin. 'Instructions from Mr McCarthy to hire you, so you're hired.'

I'm sorry. That's an awful way to come in anywhere,' Ria apologised.

'Listen, it's fine, and you're fine and we'll get along great,' said Gertie. 'I'm only telling it to you the way it is.'

They went to see Danny's parents. It was a three-hour journey by bus. Ria felt very sick but forced herself to be in good spirits. Danny's father waited in the square where the bus came in. He drove an old shabby van with a trailer attached to it.

'This is my Ria, Dad.' Danny was proud and pleased to show her off.

'You're very welcome.' The man looked old, stooped and shabby. He had worked all his life for his elder and brighter brother, the man who had given Danny a start in the business. Danny's father was involved in delivering canisters of bottled gas around the countryside. He was about the same age as Barney McCarthy but he looked a different generation.

They drove the two miles through narrow roads with high hedges to where Danny had been born. Ria looked around her, pleased to know his past and the place that had made him. But Danny hardly looked out at all.

'Did you have friends living in these places we pass by?'

'I knew them, yes,' Danny said. 'I went to school with them.'

'And will we meet them?' she wanted to know.

'They've all gone away, nearly everyone emigrated,' he said.

His mother seemed old too, much older than Ria had expected. They had ham and tomatoes, shop bread and a packet of chocolate biscuits. They were not really sure if they could come to Dublin for the wedding, it was a long way and there might be work here that would be hard to get away from.

It was obvious that this was not so. Ria protested, 'It would be wonderful to have you there for such a big day. We're going to have the reception in Tara Road and you'll see the new house.'

'We're not great people for parties,' Danny's mother said.

'But this is family,' Ria begged.

'You know, it's a bit rattly in the bus and my back isn't what it was.'

Ria looked at Danny. To her surprise he wasn't pushing and coaxing as much as she was. Surely he wanted them there? Didn't he? She waited for him to speak.

'Ah, go on. Come on, can't you. It's only once in a lifetime.' They looked at each other doubtfully. 'Now, I know you didn't go to Rich's wedding because that was in London ,' Danny continued.

'But London 's much further away than here, and that would have meant planes and boats,' Ria cried.

But the Lynches had been thrown the lifebelt they needed, the excuse not to go to the wedding.

'You see, child…' Danny's mother said, clutching Ria's arm. 'You see, if we didn't go to the one wedding it would look like favouring Danny more if we went to the other.'

'And we'll come up and see the house another time,' Danny's father said.

They looked at her hopefully and there was no more to be said.

'Of course you will,' she said soothingly. And they all smiled, Danny as much as anyone.

'Did you not want them to come?' she asked on the long bus journey home.

'Sweetheart, you could see yourself they didn't want to come,' he said.

She felt disappointed in him. He should have persuaded them. But then men were different, everyone knew this.

After only a week at Polly's Gertie told her something most unexpected. She told her that as one of the perks of the job Ria could rent a wedding dress for herself free.

'Are you serious?' Ria's face lit up with joy. She would never have been able to afford anything like this.

'I tell you it straight up… Mr McCarthy's instructions,' said Gertie. 'The whole wedding party is to be kitted out, so choose what you like. Go on, Ria, it's what he wants. Take it.'

Danny took a morning suit for himself and his best man. Rosemary chose a slinky silver dress with little pearl buttons. Ria had a few problems convincing her mother and sister that they should pick something for the day.

'Come on, Mam, Hilary. It's free, for heaven's sake. We'll never get an opportunity like this again,' she pleaded. She was nearly there. 'And why doesn't Martin wear a morning suit?' Ria suggested. 'He'd look terrific in it. Go on, Hilary, you know he would.'

That's what did it. Her mother wore a smart grey dress and jacket, with a black feathered hat, Hilary a wine-coloured suit with pale pink lapels and a huge pink hat.

Since there was no outlay on wedding clothes, they paid for a tenor to sing Tanis Angelicus' and a soprano to sing 'Ave Maria'.

It was a very mixed gathering. They invited Orla from the old office and Gertie from Polly's. One of Danny's brothers, Larry, came over from London and was best man. He looked like Danny, same fair hair and lopsided smile, only taller, and spoke now with a London accent.

'Will you be going home to see your parents?' Ria asked.

'Not this time,' Larry said. He hadn't been back to the place where he grew up to see his father and mother for four years.

Ria knew this, but she knew not to comment even by a glance. 'There'll be plenty of other times,' she said.

Larry looked at her with approval. 'That's it, Ria,' he said.

To Ria's huge relief her sister and brother-in-law made no mention at all of anything being a waste of money. The smell of paint had well left Tara Road and the big trestle tables covered with long white tablecloths held chicken salads and ice cream as well as the big wedding cake.

Barney McCarthy was there. He apologised that his wife Mona had not been able to come. She had gone to Lourdes with three friends, it had been long arranged. Gertie had giggled a bit at this information, but Ria had hushed her quickly. Barney had sent two cases of champagne in advance and he stood chatting easily among the forty people who toasted the bride and groom, handsome Danny Lynch and his beautiful bride,

Ria had never thought she could look as well as this with her dark curls swept up into a head-dress and a long veil trailing behind her. The dress had never been worn before, thick embroidery and lace from head to toe, the richest fabric she had ever seen.

Rosemary had been there to advise and suggest throughout. 'Stand very straight, Ria. Hold your shoulders right back. Don't scuttle up the church; when you get in there walk much more slowly.'

'Look, it's not Westminster Abbey,' Ria protested.

'It's your day, every eye in the place is on you, walk like you want to give them something to look at.'

'That's easy if you look like you. With me it's different. They'd die if they thought I was taking myself seriously.' Ria felt nervous, as if she was going to look affected, as if she were playing a part. She was so afraid of having them all laugh at her.

'Why shouldn't you take yourself seriously? You look gorgeous. You've got proper make-up on for once. You're a dream, go for it, Ria.' The bridesmaid's enthusiasm was infectious. Ria walked almost regally into the church on the arm of her brother-in-law who was giving her-away.

Danny had actually gasped when she came up the aisle.

'I love you so much,' he said as they posed by the wedding cake for pictures. And Ria suddenly felt sorry for whoever else was going to wear this dress when it was cleaned and back out in the agency.

No other bride could ever look as well or be so happy.

They had no honeymoon. Danny went back to looking for work and Ria went back to her job at Polly's. She enjoyed working there and the extraordinarily varied streams of customers they met. There were many more rich people in Dublin than she had known about, and also people who were not rich but who were prepared to spend huge amounts on a wedding day.

Gertie was kind to the brides and didn't fuss them. She helped them choose but didn't steer them towards the most expensive outfits. She encouraged them to be more daring. A wedding was for dressing-up, she said, like a rainbow or fireworks.

'Why is it called Polly's? It's a silly name,' a bride asked Ria one day.

'I think it's to do with Pretty Polly… something like that,' Ria explained.

'That was very diplomatic,' Gertie said admiringly afterwards.

'What do you mean? I hadn't a clue why he called it Polly's. Do you know?'

'After his fancy woman. It's hers; he bought it for her. You know that.'

'I didn't, actually. I hardly know him at all. I thought he was a pillar of the Church and all that.'

'Oh yes, he is when he's with the wife. But with Polly Callaghan… that's something else.'

'Oh, that's why the cheques are all to P. Callaghan. I see.'

'What did you think it was?'

'I thought it might be a tax thing.'

'But wasn't he at your wedding and all? I thought you were great pals with him.'

'No, Danny sold his house for him, that's all.'

'Well, he told me to give you the job and to organise all the gear for your wedding, so he must think very highly of your Danny.'

'He's not the only one. Danny's out at lunch today with two fellows who are thinking of setting up their own firm. They want him to join them.'

'And will he?'

'I hope not, Gertie, it would be too risky. He has no capital; he'd have to put the house up with a second mortgage as a security or something. It would be very dangerous. I'd love him to go somewhere where he'd be paid.'

'Do you tell him this?' Gertie asked.

'Not really. He's such a dreamer, and he thinks big, and he's been right so often. I stay out of it a lot of the time. I don't want to be the one who is holding him back.'

'You have it all worked out,' Gertie said with admiration. Gertie had a boyfriend, Jack, who drank too much. She had tried to finish with him many times, but she always went back.

'No, I don't really have it worked out,' Ria said. 'I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.'

'Did you say yes to them?' Ria hoped that Danny couldn't hear the anxiety in her voice.

'No, I didn't. Actually, I didn't say anything. I listened to them instead.'

Danny was good at that. It looked as if he was talking but in fact he was nodding his head and listening.

'And what did you hear?'

'How much they wanted Barney's business and how seriously they thought I could deliver it. They know all about him, like what he eats for breakfast sort of thing. They told me about companies and businesses he has that I never knew about.'

'And what are you going to do?'

'I've done it,' Danny said

'What on earth did you do?'

'I went to Barney. I told him that anything I had was due to him and that I had this offer from fellows who knew a bit too much about him for his comfort.'

'And what did he say?'

'He thanked me and said he'd come back to me.'

'Danny, aren't you amazing! And when will he come back to you?'

'I don't know. I had to pretend not to mind. Maybe next week, maybe tomorrow. You see, he might advise me to take it or not to. I'll listen to him. He could ring tomorrow. I might be wrong but I feel he'll ring tomorrow.'

Danny was wrong. Barney McCarthy called that night. He had been thinking of setting up a small estate agency business himself. All he really needed was to be prompted to do it. Now he had. Would Danny Lynch manage it for him? On a salary, of course, but part of the profits as well.

Not long after this they were invited to a party at the McCarthys' home. Ria recognised a lot of faces there. Politicians, a man who read the news on television, a well-known golfer.

Barney's wife was a large comfortable-looking woman. Mona moved with ease and confidence amongst the guests. She wore a navy wool dress and had what must have been real pearls around her plump neck. She was probably in her mid-forties, like her husband. Could Barney really have a fancy woman called Polly Callaghan? Ria wondered. A settled married man with this comfortable home and grown-up children? It seemed unlikely. Yet Gertie had been very definite about it. Ria tried to imagine what Polly Callaghan looked like, what age she was.

Just at that moment Mona McCarthy came up to her. 'I understand you work at Polly's,' she said pleasantly.

Ria suddenly felt an insane urge to deny it and say she had never heard of Polly. She told Barney McCarthy's wife that it was a most interesting job and that she and Gertie loved getting involved in all the dramas of the people who came in and out.

'Will you continue working after you've had the baby?' Mona asked.

'Oh yes, we need the money and we thought we'd give a foreign student one of the bedsitters and she could look after the baby.'

Mona frowned. 'You don't need the money surely?'

'Well, Mrs. McCarthy, your husband has been most generous to Danny but we have a huge house to keep up.'

'When Barney was starting out I went out to work. It was to make money to keep Barney's builder's van on the road. I always regret it. The children grew up without me. You can't have that time back again.'

'I'm sure you're right, we'll certainly talk about it. Maybe the moment I see the baby I won't want to go out to work ever again.'

'I didn't certainly, but I went out after six weeks.'

'Was he very grateful, Mr McCarthy? Did he know how hard it was for you?'

'Grateful? No, I don't think so. Things were different then. We were so anxious to make a go of it, you know, we just did what had to be done.'

She was nice, this woman. No airs and graces, and they must have been a little like herself and Danny years ago. How sad that now when they were old he fancied someone else.

She looked across the room. Danny was at the centre of a little circle telling them some funny story.

Danny's parents could never have been guests in a house like this. Barney McCarthy when he was growing up would not have been in places of this grandeur. Perhaps he saw in Danny some of the same push and drive that he had in his youth, and that was why he was encouraging him. In years to come they might be entertaining at Tara Road and everyone would know that Danny had another lady somewhere.

She gave a little shiver. Nobody knew what the future had in store.

'What does she look like, this Polly?' Ria asked Gertie.

'Mid-thirties, I imagine. Red hair, very smart, keeps herself well.

She comes in about once a month. You'll like her, she's really nice.'

'I don't think I will like her. I liked the wife.'

'But she's old the wife, isn't she, I mean really old?'

'I suppose she's about the same age as her husband. She went out to work, you know, so that he could afford a van.'

Gertie shrugged. 'That's life,' she said. 'It's hard on old Polly too at Christmas-time and Sunday lunches, he doing the family man bit. I suppose I should be congratulating myself that at least my Jack is single. He may not be much else but single he is.'

Gertie was back with Jack again. He was meant to be seriously off the drink this time but nobody was holding their breath.

Barney McCarthy was looking at some land in Galway and he needed Danny to go with him. Barney drove fast and they crossed the country quickly.

A table had been booked in advance and waiting for them was an attractive woman in a cream-coloured suit.

'This is Polly Callaghan.' Barney gave her a kiss on the cheek and introduced her to Danny.

Danny swallowed. He had heard about her from Ria. He hadn't expected her to be so glamorous.

'How do you do,' he said.

'The boy wonder, I'm told,' she smiled at him.

'No, just born lucky.'

'Was it Napoleon who said he wanted generals that were lucky?' she asked.

'He was bloody right if that's what he said. Now, what drinks?'

'Diet Coke, please,' Danny said.

'No vices at all?' she asked.

'I want to keep a clear head if I'm to work out how much apartments would go for in the area.'

'You weren't born lucky,' Polly Callaghan said. 'You were born sharp, that's much better.'

'And did they have the same room?' Ria asked.

'I don't know, I didn't check.'

'But, you know, were they lovey-dovey?' she was eager to know.

'Not so you'd notice. They were more like a married couple really. They acted as if they knew each other very well.'

'Poor Mona, I wonder does she know,' Ria said.

'Poor Mona, as you call her, probably doesn't give a damn. Hasn't she a palace of a house and everything she wants?'

'She may want not to share him with a mistress.'

'I liked Polly Callaghan, actually. She was nice.'

'I'm sure,' said Ria, a little sourly.

Polly came into the shop next day. 'I met your husband in Galway, did he tell you?'

'No, Mrs. Callaghan, he didn't.' For some reason Ria lied.

Polly seemed pleased, she nodded approvingly. 'Discreet as well as everything else, or maybe you are. Anyway he's a bright lad.'

'He is indeed.' Ria smiled proudly.

Polly looked at Gertie carefully. 'What happened to your face, Gertie? That's a terrible bruise.'

'I know, Mrs. Callaghan. Didn't I have a fall off my bicycle. I hoped it wasn't too noticeable.'

'Did you have to have a stitch?'

'Two, but it's nothing. Will I get you a cup of coffee?'

'Please.' Polly looked after Gertie as she went upstairs for the coffee tray. 'Are you two friends, Ria?'

'Yes, yes indeed.'

'Then talk her out of that lout she's involved with. He did that to her, you know.'

'Oh, he couldn't have…' Ria was shocked.

'Well he did it before, that's why she wears her hair long to hide it. He'll kill her in the end. But she won't be told, not by me anyway. She thinks I'm an interfering old bat. She might listen to you.'

'Where's Mister Callaghan?' Ria asked Gertie when Polly had left the shop.

'There never was one, it's only a courtesy title. Did she tell you that Jack did this to me?'

'Yes. How do you know?'

'Because I see it in your face. And she's always on at me to get rid of him.'

'But you can't go back to him if he hit you.'

'He doesn't mean it. He's so sorry, you have no idea.'

'Did he just come in and punch you in the face?'

'No, it wasn't like that. It was an argument, he lost his temper. He didn't mean it.'

'You can't take him back.'

'Look, everyone in the world's given up on Jack, I'm not going to.'

'But you can see why everyone in the world's given up.'

'I tell you, he cried like a baby he was so ashamed. He said he didn't remember picking up the chair.'

'He hit you with a chair? Jesus, Mar, and Joseph.'

'Don't start, Ria. Please don't start. I've had my mother and my friends and Polly Callaghan. Not you as well.'

Just then Rosemary came in to look at wedding hats and the matter had to be dropped. Rosemary had been invited to a society wedding, she said. It was now seriously time to get a man. She wanted a hat that would take every eye in the place away from the bride.

'Poor bride,' said Ria.

'It's a jungle out there,' said Rosemary.

The baby was due in the first week of October.

'That will be Libra, that's a good star sign. It's got to do with being balanced,' Gertie said.

'You don't believe all of that, do you?'

'Of course I do.'

Ria laughed. 'You're as bad as my sister, Hilary. She and her friends spent a fortune on some woman in a caravan, they believed every word out of her.'

'Oh, where is she? Let's go to her.'

'I will in my foot go to her.'

'She might tell you if it's going to be a girl or a boy.'

'Stop it. I don't want to know that badly.'

'Ah, come on. And we'll get Rosemary to come too. What'll she say?'

'She'll tell me that I'm pregnant, she'll see that from my stomach. That you're involved with a fellow who can't keep his fists to himself; she'll see that from your face. And that Rosemary's going to marry a rich man, it's written all over her. And we'll have given her good money for that.'

'Please,' Gertie said. 'It'll be a laugh.'

Mrs. Connor had a thin, haunted face. She did not look like someone who was being handed fistfuls of fivers and tenners by foolish women in exchange for a bit of news about the future. She looked like someone who had seen too much. Maybe that was all part of the mystique, Ria thought, as she sat down and stretched out her hand.

The baby would be a girl, a healthy girl, followed some years later by a boy.

'Aren't there going to be three? I have three little lines here,' Ria asked.

'No, one of them isn't a real child-line. It could be a miscarriage, I don't know.'

'And my husband's business, is it going to do well?'

'I'd have to see his hand for that. Your own business will do well, I can see there's a lot of travel, across the sea. Yes, a lot of travel.'

Ria giggled to herself. It was twenty pounds wasted, and the baby would probably be a boy. She wondered how the others had got on.

'Well, Gertie, what did she tell you?'

'Not much, you were right. She was no good really.'

Rosemary and Ria looked at each other. Rosemary was aware of Jack and his lifestyle by now.

'I expect she told you to walk out on your current dark stranger,' Rosemary said.

'Don't be so cruel, Rosemary, she did not say that.' Gertie's voice sounded shaky.

'Listen, I didn't mean it,' Rosemary said.

There was a silence.

'And what about you, Rosemary?' Ria wanted to break the tension.

'A load of old nonsense, nothing I wanted to know at all.'

'No husband?'

'No, but a whole rake of other problems. You don't want to be bothered with it.' She fell silent again and concentrated on driving the car. As an outing it had not been a success.

'I told you we were mad to go,' Ria said.

The others said nothing at all.

Barney McCarthy was a frequent visitor to Tara Road. Ria learned that he had two married daughters who lived in big modern houses out near the sea. Barney said that neither house had a tenth of the character that this one had. But the girls had insisted. They wanted places that had never heard of damp. They got no pleasure from going to auctions and sales and finding treasures. They just liked to accept delivery of brand-new suites of furniture, fitted kitchens, built-in bedroom cupboards. He spoke with an air of resignation, it was simply the way people were.

'It sounds as if he pays for it all,' Ria suggested to Danny.

'You can be sure he does, those two guys aren't lighting any fires anywhere—getting married to rich women, that's the only energy they used up.'

'Are they nice?'

'Not really, anyway not to me. And why should they be?

They're not in business with him like I am. They resent me like hell.'

'Don't you mind?'

Danny shrugged.

'Why should I mind? Listen, Barney's got us a perfect Victorian brass fender from an old house his people are demolishing, and proper fire-irons. He says they're just right, the genuine article; the fender would cost two hundred pounds at a sale.'

'And why do we get them for nothing?' Ria asked.

'Because to everyone else they're just junk from a house. They'd go on a scrap pile. We really are getting that front room into shape.'

Danny was right. It was unrecognisable now. Ria often wondered what would happen if old Sean came back and saw what they had done to his shabby old storeroom. They hadn't got the carpet of Danny's dreams yet, though they kept looking, but they had found what they thought was the perfect table. It was called a 'mahogany tripodular breakfast table' in the catalogue. That meant it had three feet, they realised; it was exactly right for this room. They discussed it for ages. Was it too small, should they go for a real, proper dining table? But four could sit around it easily and even six at a pinch. They would be entertaining more as time went on.

Ria said that she had lost all contact with what was real and what was fantasy. 'I never saw ourselves as owning anything like this, Danny.' Her arms swept in the whole house. 'I never thought we'd have a front room like this in a million years. How do I know whether we might not end up with a dining table for twelve and a butler.'

They laughed and hugged each other.

Danny Lynch from the broken-down cottage in the back of beyond, and Ria Johnson from the corner house in the big shabby estate were not only living like gentry in a big Tara Road mansion, they were actually debating what style of dining table to buy.

The day the round table was delivered they brought up two kitchen chairs and a bowl of flowers and sat across from each other holding hands. It was a warm evening, their hall door was open and when Barney McCarthy called he stood for a few moments looking in at them, happy and excited.

'You do my heart good, the pair of you,' he said.

And Ria realised how his two sons-in-law must indeed hate Danny, the favoured one, in many ways the heir apparent.

Barney said that Danny and Ria needed a car. They began to look at the ads for second-hand motors. 'I meant a company car,' he said. And they got a new one.

I'm really afraid to let Hilary see this,' Ria said, patting the new upholstery.

'Let me think… she'll say that the depreciation starts the moment you put it on the road,' Danny guessed.

'And my mother would say there was a car like this in Coronation Street or something.' Ria laughed. 'I wonder what your parents would say if they saw it?'

Danny thought for moment. 'It would worry them. It would be too much. They'd have to put coats on and take the dog for a walk.' He sounded sad but accepting that this was the way things would always be.

'They'll become more joyful in time. We won't give up on them,' Ria said. She thought she sounded a bit like Gertie, who despite everything was not going to give up on Jack. She was actually wearing his ring now and they would marry soon. That would give him confidence, she said.

They were invited to Sunday lunch at the McCarthys. Not a big party this time, just the four of them. Barney and Danny talked buildings and property all the time. Mona and Ria talked about the baby.

'I thought about your advice, and I think I am going to stay at home and look after the baby,' Ria said.

'Will you be able to rely on grandmothers for a bit of help?'

'Not really. My mother goes out to work and Danny's parents are miles down the country.'

'But they'll come up to see the child?'

'I hope so. They're very quiet you know, not like Danny.'

Mona nodded as if she understood very well. 'They'll mellow when the baby arrives.'

'Did that happen with you too?' You could ask Mona McCarthy anything, and she never minded talking about their humble origins.

'Yes, you see Barney was very different to the rest of his family. I think his parents didn't understand why he pushed himself so hard.

They didn't do much; his father just made tea in the builder's yard all his life. But they loved it when we brought the children round at a weekend. I used to be tired and could have done without it. They never knew why Barney worked so hard and they couldn't understand his head for business. But it's different when it comes to grandchildren. Maybe it will be the same in their case.'

Ria wished this kind woman didn't have the well-groomed Polly Callaghan as a rival. For the hundredth time she wondered whether Mona McCarthy knew about the situation. Almost everyone else in Dublin did.

Danny had to go to London with Barney. Ria drove him to the airport. Just as she kissed him goodbye she saw the smart figure of Polly Callaghan get out of a taxi. Ria deliberately looked the other way.

But Polly had no such niceties; she came straight over. 'So this is the new car. Very nice too.'

'Oh hallo, Mrs. Callaghan. Danny, I'm not meant to park here, I should move off. Anyway I should be at work.'

'I’ll keep an eye on him for you in London . I won't let him get distracted by any little glamour-puss over there.'

'Thanks,' Ria gulped.

'Come on, Danny. The great man has the tickets, he'll start to fuss in a moment.' They were gone.

Ria thought of Mona McCarthy and how she had taken Barney's children every weekend to see their grandparents even though she was tired from working all week.

Life was hard on people.

Ria gave up work a week before the baby was due. They were all very supportive, these people she had not even known a year ago. Barney McCarthy said that Danny must be around Dublin , not touring the country so that he would be nearby for the birth. Barney's wife Mona said that they shouldn't waste money buying cots and prams. She had kept plenty for grandchildren; it was just that her own daughters hadn't provided her with any yet.

Barney's mistress Polly Callaghan said that Ria must know there would always be a part-time job for her when and if she wanted to come back, and gave her an outlandish pink-and-black bed-jacket to wear in hospital.

Rosemary, who had been promoted to run a bigger branch of the printing company, came to see her from time to time.

'I'm just no good at all this deep breathing and waters breaking and everything,' Rosemary apologised. 'I've no experience of it.'

'Nor I,' Ria said ruefully. 'I've never had anything to do with it either, and I'm the one who's going to have to go through with it.'

'Ah well,' Rosemary wagged her finger as if to say that we all knew why. 'Does Danny go to these prenatal classes with you? I can't imagine him…'

'Yes, he's as good as gold, it's idiotic really, but very exciting all the same; he loves it in a way.'

'Of course he does, and he'll love you too again when you get your figure back.' Rosemary was wearing her very slim-fitting trouser suit and looked like a tall elegant reed. She meant it to be reassuring, Ria thought, but because she felt like a tank herself it was unsettling.

As were the visits from pretty little Orla from the big estate agency, that would have been greatly frowned on had her bosses known of them. And Ria's mother came too, full of advice and warnings.

The only one who didn't come was Hilary. She was so envious of Tara Road that it pained her to come inside the door and see the renovations. Ria had tried to involve her in the whole business of looking for bargains at auctions, but that didn't work either. Hilary became so discontented at the size and scope of her own house compared to Ria's that the outings would end in disaster. The wonderful day when they bought the huge sideboard was almost ruined because of Hilary's tantrum.

'It's so unfair,' she said. 'Just because you have a great big empty room, you can buy great furniture dirt cheap. It's only because nobody else has these mansions that nobody wants it.'

'Well, isn't that our good luck?' Ria was stung.

'No, it's the system—you're going to get that sideboard for nothing…'

'Shush, Hilary, it's coming up in a minute. I have to concentrate. Danny says we can go to three hundred pounds—it's worth eight hundred, he thinks.'

'You're going to pay three hundred pounds for one piece of furniture for a parlour you don't even use? You're completely mad.'

'Hilary, please, people are looking at us.'

'And so well they might be looking at us, that thing could be crawling with woodworm.'

'It's not, I checked.'

'It's daft this, believe me.'

The bidding had started. Nobody was interested. One dealer that Ria knew by sight was raising it slowly against a man who ran a second-hand furniture shop. But they would both have the same problem unloading it. Whose house would have room for it?

'A hundred and fifty.' Ria's voice was clear and strong.

The others stayed in for a minute or two and then dropped out. She had the Victorian serving table, as it was described, for one hundred and eighty pounds.

'Now! Wasn't that marvellous?' Ria said, but the dead, disappointed face of her sister gave no answering flicker.

'Look, Hilary, I just saved a hundred and twenty pounds, why don't we celebrate? Isn't there something you'd like—you and Martin? Go on, we'll bid for that if there is.'

'No thank you.' The voice was stiff.

Ria thought of the huge celebration there would be in Tara Road when she told Danny the good news about the sideboard. She couldn't bear to think of her sister going back to that pokey little house, to that sad, joyless Martin. But she knew there was nothing she could do. She would have liked to stay, and with the money she had saved maybe spend fifty pounds on some nice glass. There were a couple of decanters that might go cheaply. But the mockery would be too great. Hilary would remind her that they were people who had had tomato ketchup and a bottle of Chef mayonnaise on their sideboard when they were young. Not a ship's decanter. It would take the joy out of it.

'Let's go then, Hilary,' she had said.

And since then Hilary had not been around to the house at all. It was childish and hurtful, but Ria felt that she had been given so much she could afford to be forgiving and tolerant. She wanted to see her sister and talk to her the way they used to before all this money and style got in the way.

Danny was working late in the office, there were still five days to go before the baby. Ria decided she would drive to see Hilary. She didn't care what snide remarks would be made by her sister about the smart car. She wanted to talk to her.

Martin was out; he was at a residents' meeting where they were organising a protest. Hilary looked tired and discontented.

'Oh it's you,' she said when she saw Ria. Her eye was drawn to the car at the gate. 'Hope that will still have tyres on it when you leave,' she added.

'Hilary, can I come in?'

'Sure.'

'You and I didn't have a fight about anything, did we?'

'What are you going on about?'

'Well, it's just that you never come and see me. I ask you so often it's embarrassing. You're not there when I go to Mam. Not one word of good wishes over all this. We used to be pals. What happened?'

Hilary's face was mutinous like a child. 'You don't need pals any more.'

Ria was not going to let this go. 'Like hell I don't need a pal. I'm scared stiff of having the baby in the first place. People say it's terrifying and that no one admits it. I'm worried that I mightn't be able to look after it properly and I'm afraid that Danny's taken on too much and that we'll lose everything. At times I'm afraid he'll stop loving me if I start whining about things, and you dare to tell me I don't need a pal.'

Things changed then. Hilary's frown had gone. 'I’ll put on the kettle,' she said.

Orla called round to Tara Road. One of the bedsitter tenants explained that both the Lynches were out. Danny was probably at his office. Ria had taken the car somewhere. Orla thought she would call on Danny at his office. She had been drinking since she left work; she didn't feel like going home yet. And Danny might like to go for a pint. And he was extraordinarily attractive.

Nora Johnson read the letter for the third time. They were selling the shop where she worked. There were some expressions of regret. And explanations of the changing needs of consumers. But the bottom line was that, come the beginning of November Nora Johnson, was going to have no job.

Rosemary smiled at the man across the table. He was a big customer at the print shop. He had asked her out many times. Tonight was the first time she had said yes and they were having dinner in a very expensive restaurant. They were doing a colour brochure for him. It was for a charity heavily supported by businessmen. It would be a good point of contact. Others might see and admire their work. Rosemary had spent a lot of time and trouble making sure that the finished product would be right.

'And do you have the full list of your sponsors so that we can set them out for you with some suitable artwork?'

'I have them back at my hotel,' he said.

'But you don't have a hotel room,' Rosemary said. 'You live in Dublin .'

'That's right.' He had an easy, confident smile. 'But tonight I have a hotel room.' He raised his glass at her.

Rosemary raised her glass back. 'What an extravagant gesture,' she said.

'You're worth only the very best,' he said.

'I meant extravagant not to have checked first whether the room would be called on.'

He laughed at what he thought was her grudging admiration. 'You know, I had this premonition that you would come to dinner with me and end the evening with a drink back at the hotel.'

'And your premonition was exactly half right. Thank you for a delightful dinner.' She stood up ready to leave.

He was genuinely amazed. 'What makes you come on like this all promises and teasing and then a bucket of cold water?'

Rosemary spoke clearly. She could be heard at the nearby tables. 'There were no promises and no teasings. There was an invitation to dinner to discuss business, which was accepted. There was no question of going to your hotel room. We don't need business that badly.'

She walked head high from the restaurant, with all the confidence that being twenty-three, blonde and beautiful brings with it.

'I didn't mean to be stand-offish,' Hilary was saying. 'It's just that you have everything, Ria, really everything… a fellow like a film star… Mam says he's too good-looking…'

'What does Mam know about men?'

'And you've got that house and the flash car outside the door here and you go to places and meet celebrities. How was I to know that you might want someone like me around…?'

As she was about to answer that Ria got the dart of pain that she knew was waiting for her some time next week. The baby was on the way.

Gertie had been out to get fish and chips. She laid the package on the kitchen table while she went to get the plates that were warming in the bottom of the oven. She had a tray with tomato ketchup, knives, forks and napkins ready.

She had not understood Jack's humour. With his arm he swept the paper-wrapped parcel off the table. 'You're only a slut,' he shouted at her. 'You're not fit for any decent man's house. A woman who can't put dinner on the table but has to go out to the chipper to buy it.'

'Oh no. Jack, please, please,' Gertie cried.

He had picked up what was nearest to hand. As ill luck would have it, it was a heavy, long-handled scrubbing brush.

When Martin Moran came back from the residents' association a young boy from next door was waiting with the news. 'There's a baby being born,' he said excitedly. 'Your missus didn't know how to drive the car so my da drove them to the hospital. You missed all the fun.'

They couldn't find Danny. He wasn't at Tara Road. He wasn't at the office. Ria gave Hilary Barney McCarthy's telephone number in case he might be there but his wife Mona said that he wasn't at home, and she hadn't seen Danny at all. He had wanted to be at the hospital. They had been through it all so many times.

Ria wanted him beside her now. 'Danny!' she screamed with her eyes closed. He had said so often that this was their baby, he would be there for the birth. Where in God's name was he?

Danny had been about to leave his office when Orla King arrived. Pretty as a picture but definitely slurring her words. He didn't need a conversation with her just now. But Danny Lynch was never rude.

'Would you like to go to the pub for the one?' Orla asked.

'No, sweetheart. I'm bushed,' he said.

'A pub livens you up. Come on, please.'

'You'll have to forgive me tonight, Orla.'

'What night then?' she asked. She ran her tongue over her lips as she smiled at him.

He could either go at once, risking a scene and possibly leaving unfinished business, or he could offer her a drink from the bottle of brandy he kept for Barney. 'A small brandy then, Orla. But just three minutes to drink it then we both have to go.'

She had won, she thought. She sat on his desk with her legs crossed as Danny went to the cupboard and found the bottle. Just then the phone rang.

'Oh leave it, Danny. It's only work,' Orla pleaded.

'Not this time of night,' he said, picking it up.

'Danny, are you alone? This is Polly Callaghan. It's urgent.'

'Not really, no.'

'Can you be alone?' '

'It will take a few minutes.'

'I haven't time… Can you just listen?'

'Of course.'

'Have you your car?'

'No.'

'Right, Barney's here. He has chest pains. I can't call the cardiac ambulance to come here, I want to call it to your house.'

'Yes, of course.'

'But it's a question of my getting him there.'

'I'll get a taxi to you. I'll make the other call first.'

At this stage the petulant voice of Orla could be heard. 'Dan-ny, come off the phone, come over here.'

'And you'll get rid of whatever companion you have with you?'

'Yes.' He was clipped.

And even more clipped dealing with Orla. 'I'm sorry, Orla sweetheart. Brandy's over… I have an emergency.'

'You don't call me sweetheart and then ask me to leave,' she began.

She found herself propelled towards the door, while Danny grabbed his jacket and phoned an ambulance all at the same time.

She heard him give the Tara Road address. 'Who's sick? Is it the baby arriving?' she asked, frightened by his intensity.

'Goodbye, Orla,' he said, and she saw him running down the street to hail a taxi.

Barney was a very grey shade of white. He lay in a chair beside the bed. Polly had made unsuccessful attempts to dress him.

'Don't worry about the tie,' Danny barked. 'Go down and tell the taxi man to come up… to help me get him down the stairs.'

Polly hesitated for a second. 'You know the way Barney hates anyone knowing his business.'

'This is a taxi man, for Christ's sake, Polly. Not MI5. Barney'd want to get there quicker.'

Barney spoke with his hand firmly holding his chest. 'Don't talk about me as if I'm not here, for Christ's sake. Yes, get the taxi man, Polly, quick as you can.' To Danny he spoke gently. 'Thank you for getting here, thank you for sorting it out.'

'You're going to be fine.' Danny supported the older man easily and warmly in a way he would never have been able to hold his own father.

'You'll look after everything for me, the way it should be?'

'You'll be doing it yourself in forty-eight hours,' Danny said.

'But just in case…'

'Just in case, then. Yes, I will.' Danny spoke briskly, knowing that was what was wanted.

At that moment the taxi man arrived. If he recognised the face of Barney McCarthy he gave no sign. Instead he got down to the job of easing a heavy man with heart pains down the narrow stairs of an expensive apartment block to take him to another address from which the ambulance would collect him. If he had worked out the situation he had seen too much and been too long in the taxi game to let on anything at all.

Hilary waited in the big shabby room outside the labour ward. From time to time she made further unsuccessful stabs at finding Danny. There was no reply from her mother's house when Hilary rang. She didn't know her mother was sitting there with the letter telling her that her working life was over.

Nora Johnson was too despondent to answer the telephone until she had pulled herself together and decided what she would do next.

'Danny!' That was the scream before the baby's head appeared. The sister was speaking and she could hardly hear. 'All right, Ria. It's over, you have a beautiful little baby girl. She's perfect.'

Ria felt more tired than she had ever been. Danny had not been here to see his daughter born. The fortune-teller had been right, it was a little girl.

Orla King felt that she was now losing her mind because of drink. Not only did the guilt of trying to seduce a man on the night that his wife was having their first baby hang heavily on her, but the subsequent confusion in her brain worried her. She knew that Ria must have been at home because she heard Danny call the ambulance to Tara Road. But then she heard from everyone else that Ria was at her sister's house and they had to get a neighbour to drive Ria's car to the hospital as Hilary couldn't drive. Orla knew now that she was hallucinating and having memory failure. She went to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

And on the first night she met a man called Colm Barry. He was single, handsome and worked in the bank. Colm had dark curly hair and dark sad eyes.

'You don't look like a banker,' Orla said to him.

'I don't feel like a bank clerk, I'd rather be a chef.'

'I don't feel like being a typist in an estate agency, I'd like to be a model or a singer,' Orla said.

'There's no reason why we shouldn't be these things, is there?' Colm asked with a smile.

Orla didn't know whether he was making fun of her or being nice, but she didn't mind. He was going to make these meetings bearable.

On that night when Gertie saw Jack raising the great scrubbing-brush that might have split her head, she picked up a knife and stuck it straight into his arm. They both watched helplessly and amazed as the blood poured on to the packet of fish and chips he had flung to the floor. Then she took off her engagement ring, laid it on the table, got her coat and walked out of the house. From a phone box at the corner of the road, she rang the police and told them what she had done. In the emergency ward Jack assured everyone that it had been purely domestic and that nobody was making any accusation against anyone whatsoever.

For a very long time Gertie refused to see Jack, and then, to everyone's disappointment, she agreed to meet him just once. Jack had been put off the road for drunken driving and consequently sacked from his job. Gertie found a chastened and sober man. They talked and she remembered why she loved him. They asked two strangers to be their witnesses and they were married in a cold church at eight o'clock one morning.

Gertie left Polly's just before Polly Callaghan sacked her. She was absent too often; it was no longer reasonable to expect them to keep her on the payroll. Jack had bouts of sobriety, never lasting very long. Gertie grew white-faced and anxious. She got a job in a launderette just round the corner from Tara Road where there was a flat upstairs. It was a living but only a bare living.

Gertie's own mother washed her hands of the whole situation. She said that she just hoped Gertie had good friends who would tide her over when times got really bad. Gertie had one friend who tided her over a great deal: Ria Lynch.

Hilary Moran never fully forgave Danny Lynch for not being with his wife that night. Oh, she had heard that there were explanations and confidences that had to be kept, and Ria certainly bore no grudge. But nobody else had heard the great wailing as Ria had waited for him to come to her during the long hours of labour. It made her feel even more strongly that she had got a good man in Martin. He might never reach the dizzy heights of Danny Lynch; he was certainly not as easy on the eye. But you could rely on him. He would always be there. And when Hilary had a child Martin would not be missing. She hoped that they would have children. The fortune-teller had been wrong about living amid trees. She might be wrong about them having no children as well.

Barney McCarthy recovered from his heart attack. Everyone said that he had been so fortunate to have it come upon him when he was with quick-witted, resourceful Danny Lynch who wasted no time in getting him to hospital. He had to take things a little more easily these days.

He had wanted to involve Danny more in his business, but met with unexpected resistance from his family. Perfectly natural resentment, Barney thought to himself. They obviously feared that Danny was getting too close to him. He would have to be more diplomatic. Show them that he was not going outside the family.

Sometimes he felt that his daughters seemed sharper with him, less loving. Less uncritically supportive. But Barney did not allow himself the luxury of brooding about people's moods. These girls owed him everything. He had slaved long hours and years to get them their superior education and degrees. Even if they had heard something about Polly Callaghan they were unlikely to rock the boat. They knew that he would not leave Mona, that the household would continue undisturbed. He enjoyed his dealings with Danny Lynch, but for everyone's sake he just had to make sure they were less public as time went on.

For Nora Johnson the day that her granddaughter was born was also the date that she had been told her job was over. She made a decision not to tell any of the family about it, not until she had tried to find another position at any rate. But it wasn't easy, and in the first weeks of Annie Lynch's life her grandmother was facing rejection after rejection. There were few openings for a woman of fifty-one with no qualifications.

Wearily and without much hope she went for an interview as a carer-companion to an elderly lady who lived in a big house in Tara Road which had a purpose-built little granny cottage in the grounds. It turned out extremely well. They took to each other on sight. When it became known that Nora had a daughter living in Tara Road the old lady's family suggested that maybe the post should be a residential one. Nora could sell her own house, have a nest egg and live close to her daughter Ria.

Ah, but what about her security and her future? Nora had wondered. Where would she live when, in the fullness of time, the old lady she was looking after had left this earth? It was arranged that she should have first refusal on buying the little house when that day came.

Polly Callaghan remembered the night that Annie was born because it was the night she thought she was going to lose Barney for ever. She had loved him without pausing to count the cost for twelve years, since she was twenty-five years old. Not once did she stop and say that it was folly to love a man who would never be free.

She did not weigh up the very likely possibility of finding herself a single man who would be delighted to provide her with a home and family. Polly Callaghan, glamorous, articulate and successful, would have been the object of interest to many a man.

But the thought had not crossed her mind. She knew she had had a lucky escape that night. Barney had only just been got to Intensive Care in time, but he had agreed to change his lifestyle, give up the cigarettes and brandy. Walk more, behave like he might actually be mortal instead of invincible. Polly had been urging this for years, while his wife had provided comfort food and no such structure.

Now at last he had got the warning that he needed to jolt him into action. Barney McCarthy was only in his forties; he had years of living ahead of him.

Polly had been grateful to Danny Lynch for his speedy response. Grateful yet disappointed in him. He obviously had a girl with him in his office when she had called that night. Polly had heard her giggling. Polly was not one to sit in judgement on a man having an affair outside marriage. But she thought that Danny was fairly young to have started. And it was, after all, a night when you might have expected him to be with his wife who was having their first baby. Still, Polly was philosophical. That's men.

Rosemary remembered very well the time that Annie Lynch was born. It had been something of a turning-point in her life. First there was that loutish man who had booked a hotel bedroom and had assumed that she was going to share it. And this was the time she felt unexpectedly attracted to a man called Colm Barry who worked in the bank near where she worked. He had always been helpful and encouraging about how she should handle her business. Unlike some people in that branch he had never urged caution and restraint, which was the immediate response of others in the bank. He seemed even a little disenchanted with the whole idea of the bank. He was just genuinely helpful, and seemed admiring of Rosemary's skills in expanding the business. He must be about thirty, a tall man with black curly hair which he wore a little long on his collar. The bank didn't approve, he said with some satisfaction.

'Does it bother you what the bank thinks?' Rosemary asked.

'Not a bit. Does it bother you what other people think?' he asked in return.

'It has to a bit at work because if they see a youngish woman they're inclined to ask to speak to a man. Still! In this day and age I have to try and give off some kind of vibes of confidence I suppose. So in that way it bothers me. Not about other things though.'

He was easy to talk to. Some men had that way of listening to you and looking at you, men who really liked women. Men like Danny Lynch. Colm had sorrowful eyes, Rosemary thought. But she really liked him. Why should women always wait to be asked out? She invited Colm Barry to have dinner with her.

'I'd love to,' he said. 'But sadly I'm going to a meeting tonight.'

'Come on, Colm. The bank will survive without your being at one meeting,' she said.

'No, it's AA,' he said.

'Really, what kind of car do you have?' she asked.

'No, the other lot, Alcoholics,’ he said simply.

'Oops.'

'No, don't worry. Think me lucky that I do go, that I get the support that's there. That's why I'm able to refuse a beautiful blonde like you.'

'For tonight,' she said with a big smile. 'There'll be another night, won't there?'

'Yes, of course there could be another night. But now that you know the score you might be a little less interested in having dinner with me.' He was wry but not apologetic, just preparing himself for a change in attitude. Rosemary paused long enough for Colm to feel that he could speak again and end things before they had begun. 'We both know that you must find someone who is… let's say substantial. Don't waste time on a loser like a drinky bank clerk.'

'You're very cynical,' Rosemary said.

'And very realistic. I'll watch you with interest.'

'I’ll watch you with interest too,' she said.

Mona McCarthy always remembered where she was when she heard that Barney had been taken into Intensive Care. She was in the attic rooting out a children's cot for young Ria Lynch. She had just got an anxious phone call from Ria's sister saying that the girl had gone into labour and they were looking for Danny. Then half an hour later Danny had rung to say that Barney was absolutely fine but they had thought it wise to err on the side of caution and have an ECG. And she could come into the hospital whenever she liked; he was sending a car for her straight away. 'Where did it happen? Is it bad?' Mona asked.

Danny was calm and soothing. 'He was at home with me, in Tara Road, we were working all evening. It's fine, Mona. Believe me, he's in great shape, telling you not to worry. You'll see for yourself when you come in.'

She felt better already. He was an amazing boy, Danny, so well able to calm her down while he should be in high panic himself over his wife's labour.

'And Danny, I'm delighted to hear the baby's on the way, how is she?'

'What?'

'Ria's sister brought her in, she…'

'Oh shit, I don't believe it.' He had hung up.

'Danny?' Mona McCarthy was confused. Hilary had said she couldn't find Danny at Tara Road. Now Danny had said he had been there all evening. It was a mystery.

Whenever Mona McCarthy had been faced with a mystery she reminded herself that she was not a detective and there was probably some explanation. And then she put it out of her mind. She had found this to be a satisfactory way of coping with a few mysteries over the years. And after Barney recovered, she never asked him any details about that night.

Any more than she ever asked him to tell her about where he had dinner when he came home late or how he spent his time in hotels when he travelled. On several occasions she had to side-step conversations with her husband, conversations which looked as if they were heading towards a definition of mysteries and even confrontations. Mona McCarthy was much less simple-minded than most people believed.

Danny Lynch never forgot the frantic rush from one hospital to the other. And the look of reproach in his sister-in-law's face and the sight of his little daughter in the arms of an exhausted and tearful Ria.

He cried into Ria's dark hair and took the baby gingerly into his arms. 'I’ll never be able to make it up to you but there is a reason.' And of course she understood. He had to do what he did, he hadn't known her time had come.

He had not known it was possible to love a little human being as he loved Annie. He was going to make his little princess a home that was like a palace. Princesses deserve palaces, he said.

'You'd never think we lived in a Republic with all this chat about princesses,' Ria would tease him.

'You know what I mean, it's all like a fairy tale,' Danny would say.

And in so many ways it was.

There was enough business coming in. It meant plenty of hard work but Danny was able for that. Barney was being a little more discreet about his involvement with him.

Ria was wonderful with little Annie. She even put her into the car regularly and drove her down to see her grandparents in the country. Danny's parents seemed very touched by that. His mother knitted the baby silly hats and his father carved her little toys. There had been no knitted hats and carved toys when Danny and his brothers were growing up.

He had a truly beautiful daughter, a house that someone of his education and chances could only have dreamed about. He had a wife who was loving and good to him.

Life had been very good to Danny Lynch.

Ria had never forgotten that Danny was not at her side when the baby was born, but she had heard the story of how Barney McCarthy's life and reputation had been saved. There was no way Danny could have known that the baby would come so early. Ria had very mixed feelings about the way Barney was being protected in his double life. She hated being a party to deceiving the kindly Mona McCarthy.

But all this took very much the back seat compared to her love for the new baby. Ann Hilary Lynch weighed seven pounds one ounce at birth and was adorable. She looked up trustingly at Ria with her huge eyes. She smiled at everyone and they passed her around from one to another, a sea of delighted faces, all of them thinking that they were special to the baby.

And all Ria's fears and worries that she had blurted out to her sister Hilary seemed to have been groundless. She was able to manage her baby, and Danny loved her more and more as time went on. He was a doting father and her heart was full as she saw him take his little daughter by the hand through the big wild garden which they had never tamed. There were too many other things to do and so little time.

She grew up a sunny child in a happy home, her blonde straight hair like her father's falling into her eyes.

There had never been proper pictures of Ria as she grew up. Often she had wished she had snapshots of herself as a toddler, as a ten-year-old, as a teenager. But apart from the occasional picture of a first communion, confirmation and a visit to the zoo her mother had not kept any real record. It would be different for Annie. Everything would be there, from the hospital to her triumphant arrival in Tara Road, her first Christmas at home… all the way along the line.

And Ria took pictures of the house too. So that they would all remember the changes, so that Annie would not grow up thinking things had always been luxurious. Ria wanted her to see how she and the house had in a way grown together.

The day before the carpet arrived, and then the day it was in place; the day they finally got the Japanese vase Danny had always known would be right; the huge velvet curtains which Danny had spotted at the windows of a house which was being sold at an executor's sale. They measured them and found they fitted exactly. Danny knew they'd go for nothing, it was always the same when distant relatives were selling up. They just wanted the place cleared quickly; there were massive bargains to be had.

Ria sometimes felt a little guilty about it, but Danny said that was nonsense. Things were only valuable to those who wanted them.

Most of their life was lived in the big warm kitchen downstairs, but Danny and Ria spent some time every day in the drawing room, the room they had created from their dreams. They delighted in finding further little treasures for it. When Danny got a raise in salary they went out and bought something else. The old candlesticks that were transformed into lamps, more glass, a French clock.

There was no sense that this room was kept to impress people. It was not a parlour as Hilary had so scornfully dismissed it. The heavy framed portraits that they bought for the walls were other people's ancestors not their own. But there was no pretence, they were just big pictures of people who had been forgotten by their own. Now they came to rest on Danny and Ria's walls.

Ria did not go back to work. There were so many reasons why it made more sense to be at home. There was always a need to drive someone somewhere, or pick them up. She did one day a week in a charity shop and another morning in the hospital helping to entertain the children who had come with their mothers because there was nobody else to mind them.

Danny's office wasn't far away. Sometimes he liked to come home to lunch, or even to have a cup of coffee and relax. Barney McCarthy came to see him there too. For some reason the two of them didn't meet in hotels as much as they used to. She knew the kind of food he liked to eat nowadays and always gave him a healthy salad and some poached chicken breast.

Ria would leave the men to talk.

Barney McCarthy often said admiringly in her presence, 'You were very lucky in the wife you got, Danny. I hope you appreciate her.'

Danny always said he did, and as the years went by Ria Lynch knew this was true. Not only did her handsome Danny love her; as the years went by he loved her more than ever.

CHAPTER TWO

Rosemary's mother said that Ria Lynch was as sharp a little madam as you'd meet in a day's walk. 'I don't know why you say that,' Rosemary said. But she knew very well what caused her mother's irritation. Ria was married, well married too. This is what Mrs. Ryan wanted for her daughter and she transferred her disappointment to attacking Ria Lynch.

'Well, she came from nothing, from nowhere, a corporation estate. And look at her now, mixing with Barney McCarthy and the wife and living in a big house on Tara Road.' Mrs. Ryan sniffed with disapproval.

'Honestly, you'd find fault with anyone, Mother.' Since she was a toddler Rosemary had been told to say Mother not Mam like other girls did. They were people with class, she had been led to believe.

But as she grew up Rosemary realised that there really wasn't much sign of classiness in their lives. It was much more in her mother's mind and dreams, memories of a grander lifestyle when she was young and resentment that her husband had never lived up to her hopes.

Rosemary's father was a salesman who spent more and more time away from a home where he never felt welcome. His two daughters grew up hardly knowing him except through the severe thin-lipped disappointment of their mother who managed to make sure they realised that he had let them all down.

Mrs. Ryan had great hopes for her two elegant daughters, and believed that they would marry well and restore her to some kind of position in Dublin society. She was bitterly disappointed when Rosemary's sister, Eileen, announced that she was going to live with a woman from work called Stephanie, and that they were lovers. They were lesbians and there would be no secrecy or glossing anything over. This was the 1980s and not the Dark Ages. Mrs. Ryan cried for weeks over it and agonised as to where she had gone wrong. Her eldest daughter was having unnatural sex with a woman. And Rosemary was showing no sign at all of landing the kind of husband who might change everyone's fortunes.

No wonder she resented the good luck of Ria, a successful husband, a house in a part of Dublin that was becoming increasingly elegant, and an entry to the best homes in the city because of the patronage of the McCarthys.

Rosemary had moved into a small flat as soon as she could afford to. Life at home was no fun at all but Rosemary visited her mother every week for a lecture and a harangue about her failure to deliver the goods.

'I'm sure you're sleeping with men,' Mrs. Ryan would say. 'A mother knows these things. It's such a foolish way to go on, letting yourself be cheap and easily available. Why should anyone want to marry you if they can get it for free?'

'Mother, don't be ridiculous,' Rosemary said, neither confirming nor denying anything that had been said. There was not a great deal to confirm or deny. Rosemary had slept with very few men, only three in fact. This was more because of her own personality, which was aloof and distant, than from any sense of virtue or innate cunning.

She had enjoyed sex with a young French student and had not enjoyed it with an office colleague. She had been drunk on the two occasions when she had made love with a well-known journalist after Christmas parties, but then so had he been drunk so she didn't imagine it had been very successful.

But she didn't burden her mother with any of these details.

'I saw that Ria coming out of the Shelbourne Hotel as if she owned it the other day,' Mrs. Ryan said.

'Why don't you like her, Mother?'

'I didn't say I didn't like her, I just said she played her cards right. That's all.'

'I think she played them accidentally,' Rosemary said thoughtfully. 'Ria had no idea it was all going to turn out for her as well as it did.'

'That kind always know they don't take a step without seeing where it leads. I suppose she was pregnant when she married him.'

'I don't really know, Mother,' Rosemary said wearily.

'Of course you know. Still, she was lucky, he could easily have left her there.'

'They're very happy, Mother'

'So you say.'

'Would you like to come out and have lunch in Quentin's one day next week, Mother?'

'What for?'

'To cheer you up. We could get dressed up, look at all the famous people there.'

'There's no point, Rosemary. You mean well but who would know us? Who would know what we came from or anything about us? We'd just be two women sitting there. It's all jumped-up people these days, we'd only be on the outside looking in.'

'I have lunch there about once a week. I like it. It's expensive, of course, but then I don't eat lunch any other day so it works out fine.'

'You have lunch there every week and you haven't found a husband yet?'

Rosemary laughed. 'I'm not going there looking for a husband, it's not that kind of a place. But you do see a different world there. Come on. Say yes, you'd enjoy it.'

Her mother agreed. They would go on Wednesday. It would be something to look forward to in a world that held few other pleasures.

In Quentin's Rosemary pointed out to her mother the tucked-away booth where people went when they were being discreet. A government minister and his lady friend often dined there. It was a place where businessmen took someone from a rival organisation if they were going to offer him a job.

'I wonder who's in there today,' her mother said, drawn into the excitement of it all.

'I’ll have a peep when I go to the loo,' Rosemary promised.

At a window table she saw Barney McCarthy and Polly Callaghan. They never bothered with a private booth. Their relationship was known to everyone in the business world. She saw the journalist that she had met so spectacularly at two Christmas parties; he was interviewing an author and taking some scrawled notes which he would probably never decipher later. She saw a television personality and pointed him out to her mother who was pleased to note that he was much smaller and more insignificant than he looked on the box.

Eventually she went to the ladies' room, deliberately taking the wrong route so that she could pass the secluded table. You would have to look in carefully to see who was there. With a shock that was like a physical blow Rosemary saw Danny Lynch and Orla King from the office.

'Who was there?' her mother asked when Rosemary returned to the table.

'Nobody at all, two old bankers or something.'

'Jumped-up people,' her mother said.

'Exactly,' said Rosemary.

Ria was anxious to show off the new cappuccino machine to Rosemary.

'It's magic, but I'll still have mine black,' Rosemary said, patting her slim hips.

'You have a will of iron,' Ria said, looking at her friend with admiration. Rosemary, so tall and blonde and groomed, even at the end of a day when everyone else would be flaking. 'Barney McCarthy brought it round, he's so generous you wouldn't believe it.'

'He must think very highly of you.' Rosemary managed to lay a tea towel across her lap just in time to avoid Annie's little sticky fingers getting on to her pale skirt.

'Well, of course Danny nearly kills himself working all the hours God sends.'

'Of course.' Rosemary was grim.

'He's so tired when he gets home he often falls asleep in the chair before I can put his supper on the table for him.'

'Imagine,' Rosemary said.

'Still, it's well worth it, and he loves the work, and you're just the same; you don't mind how many hours you put in to be successful in the end.'

'Ah yes, but I take time off too. I reward myself, go out to smart places as a treat.'

Ria smiled fondly at the armchair where Danny often slept after all the tiring things he had been doing. 'I think after a busy day Danny regards getting back to Number Sixteen Tara Road as a treat. He has everything he wants here.'

'Yes, of course he has,' said Rosemary Ryan.

Hilary told Ria that one of the girls in fourth year was pregnant. A bold strap of fourteen, and she was the heroine of the hour. All the children envied her, and the staff said wasn't it great that she didn't go to England and have an abortion. The girl's mother would bring up the baby as her own so that the fourteen-year-old could return to her studies. Wasn't it very unfair, Hilary said, that some people could have a child quick as look at you, while others in stable marriages who could give a child everything didn't seem to be so lucky.

'I'm not complaining,' Hilary said, even though she rarely did anything but complain. 'But it does seem an odd way for God to have sorted out the whole business of continuing the human race. Wouldn't you think He would have arranged something much more sensible, like people going to an agency and giving proof that they could bring up a child properly, instead of teenagers getting pregnant from gropings in the bicycle sheds.'

'Yes, in a way,' Ria said.

'I don't expect you to agree with me. Look at what getting pregnant did for you, a marriage to a fellow like a film star, a house like something out of Homes and Gardens…'

'Now hardly that, Hilary,' Ria laughed.

Nora Johnson pushed her granddaughter up and down Tara Road in a pram, getting to know the neighbours and everyone's business. She had settled very well into the compact mews at Number 48A Tara Road. Small, dark, energetic, almost bird-like, she was an authority on nearly everything. Ria was amazed at how much her mother discovered about people.

'You just need to be interested, that's all,' Nora said.

In fact, as Ria knew very well, you just needed to be outrageously inquisitive and direct in your approach. Her mother told her about the Sullivan family in Number 26; he was a dentist, she ran a thrift shop. They had a daughter called Kitty just a year older than Annie, who might be a nice playmate in time. She told Ria about the old people's home at Number 68, St Rita's, where she called from time to time. It did old people a lot of good to see a baby; it made them think there was some continuity in life. Too many of them saw little of their own grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

Nora brought her clothes to Gertie's launderette for the sociability of it, she said. She knew she could use Ria's washing machine but there was a great buzz in a place like that. She said that Jack Brennan should be strung up from a lamppost and Gertie was that extraordinary mixture of half-eejit half-saint for putting up with him. Gertie's little boy John spent most of his time with his grandmother.

She reported that the big house, Number 1 on the corner, was for sale, and people said it might be a restaurant. Imagine having their own restaurant in Tara Road! Nora hoped it would be one they could all afford, not something fancy, but she doubted it. The place was becoming trendy, she said darkly.

Nora Johnson was soon much in demand as a babysitter, a dog walker and an ironer. She had always loved the smell of clean shirts, she said, and why not turn an interest into a little pocket money?

She seemed to know well in advance who was going to sell, who was going to build. Danny said she was invaluable. His eyes and ears on the road. He had managed to get two sales through his mother-in-law. He called her his secret weapon.

He also pretended a far greater interest in film stars than he really felt. Ria loved to watch him struggling for a name or to remember who had played opposite Grace Kelly in this film or who Lana Turner's leading man was in that one.

'You remind me very much of Audrey Hepburn, Mother-in-law,' he said once to her.

'Nonsense, Danny.' She was brisk.

'No, I mean it. You have the same shaped face, honestly, and long neck, doesn't she, Ria?'

'Well, Mam has a grand swan's neck all right. Hilary and I were always jealous of that,' Ria said.

'That's what I mean, like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.' Nora was pleased but she wouldn't show it. Danny Lynch was a professional charmer; he wouldn't get round her. No way would she fall for his patter. But he insisted. He showed her a picture of Audrey Hepburn with her hand under her chin. 'Go on, pose like that and I'll take a snap of you and then you'll see what I mean… Put your hand under your chin, come on, Holly…'

'What are you calling me?'

'Holly Golightly, the part Audrey plays in the film, you look just like her.' He called her Holly from that day on.

Nora Johnson who wouldn't fall for that kind of patter was totally under his spell.

Rosemary went to the bank on Friday mornings. The girls there admired her a lot. Always dressed immaculately, and it seemed as if she were wearing a different outfit each time until you looked carefully. She had three very well-cut jackets and a lot of different-coloured blouses and scarves. That's why it looked different. And she was so much on top of her business. The man who ran the print shop left everything to her. It was Rosemary Ryan who arranged the rates for deposit and the loans for new machinery. It was Rosemary who got the statement for the tax returns, and who tendered successfully for the bank calendar.

Young bank officials looked at her enviously. She was only the same age as they were and look at all the power and responsibility she had managed to get for herself. They thought she sort of mildly fancied Colm Barry, but then that couldn't be possible. Colm was the last man someone like Rosemary Ryan would go for. He had no ambition or sense of survival, even in the bank. He never kept from his boss the fact that he didn't really admire the ethics of the bank and that he went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And these kinds of revelations were not the road to promotion. Rosemary would want a much higher achiever than Colm Barry, even if she did always wait until his window was empty and asked for him if he wasn't there.

Rosemary had all her documentation done before she came to the bank each weekend. As she stood in line that Friday she saw to her amazement Orla King in animated conversation with Colm Barry over the desk. Orla had what Rosemary considered cheap and obvious good looks. Too tight a top, too short a skirt, the heels on her shoes too high. Still, men didn't see anything too flashy in it; they appeared to like it. As Oria was leaving she saw Rosemary and her face lit up. 'Well now, it's a small world. I was only talking about you yesterday,' she said.

Rosemary's face was cold and disapproving but she forced her public smile. Orla must know she had been spotted in the private booth of Quentin's. 'All full of praise I hope?' she said lightly.

'Well yes, praise and puzzlement. Why such a beautiful woman like you isn't married. That was one of the strands.'

'What an extraordinary thing to talk about.' Rosemary was very cold.

Orla didn't seem to notice the tone. 'No, you're quite well known now even people who don't know you know of you. They were all interested.'

'What very empty lives they must all live,' Rosemary said.

'You know the way people go on, they didn't mean any harm.'

'Oh, I'm certain that's true, why should they?' Her voice was so disdainful that anyone but Orla would have been put off.

'Well, why is it, Rosemary?'

'Probably like you I haven't found the right person yet.' Rosemary hoped her voice wasn't as glacial as it felt from inside.

'Ah yeah but I'm just a fun girl, you're a serious woman.'

'We're both in our twenties, Orla. Hardly over the hill yet.'

'No, but this man said, and honestly he was out for your good, he wasn't putting you down or anything, he said that you'd want to be looking round soon, the millionaires will be looking for younger models, next year's models, if you don't get in there quick.' Orla laughed happily. She meant no insult. In fact, talking to someone as beautiful as Rosemary you could only assume that saying such a thing was a joke and not to be taken seriously.

But Rosemary's face remained cold. That was exactly what Danny Lynch had said to her jokingly only a few days ago at Sunday lunch in Tara Road. Rosemary hadn't minded then but she minded now. She minded very much that he was saying such things about her to Orla King over lunch the previous day.

Orla was heading off for work without a care in the world. 'Cheers, Colm, see you Tuesday night,' she called.

'I gather that you and the lovely Ms King are going out socially,' Rosemary said to Colm.

'Yes, well that's right, sort of…' He was vague.

Rosemary realised that it must be at an AA meeting. People would tell you of their own involvement but they never told you who else went to the meetings. She was glad in a way that he had not fallen immediately for the tight sweaters and the skirt stretched across the small round bottom. 'Anyway, it's a very small forest, Dublin , isn't it? We all find out about everyone else sooner or later.' She was only making conversation but she saw a wary look come across his face.

'What do you mean?' he asked.

'I only meant if we were in London or New York we'd never know half the queue in the bank, that's all.'

'Sure. By the way, I'm leaving here at the end of the month.'

'Are you, Colm? Where are they sending you?'

'I'm brave as a lion. I'm leaving the bank altogether,' he said.

'Now that is brave. Are there farewell drinks or anything?' She could have bitten off her tongue.

'No, but I'll tell you what there will be. I'm going to open a restaurant in Tara Road. And as soon as I get started I'll send you an invitation to the launch.'

'I’ll tell you what I'll do, I'll print the invites for you as a present,' she said.

'It's a done deal,' he said, and they shook hands warmly. He had a lovely smile. What a pity he was such a loser, Rosemary thought. He would have been a very restful man to have teamed up with. But a restaurant in Tara Road? He must be out of his mind. There was no catchment area there, no passing trade. As an enterprise it was doomed before it began.

Danny and Barney McCarthy were going to look at property very near Danny's old home.

'Will we all go together and take Annie to see her grandparents?' Ria suggested.

'No, love. It's not a good idea this time. I'm going to be flat out looking at places, and making notes, meeting local fellows who are all mad to make a quick killing. There's going to be nothing but meetings and more meetings in the hotel.'

'Well, you will go and see them?'

'I might, I might not. You know the way it's more hurtful to go in somewhere for five minutes than not to go at all.'

Ria didn't know. 'You could drive down a couple of hours earlier.'

'I have to go when Barney goes, sweetheart.'

Ria knew not to push it. 'Fine. When the weather gets better I'll drive her down to see them, we might both go.'

'What? Yes, great.' She knew he wouldn't. He had separated himself from them a long time ago, they were no longer part of his life. Sometimes Danny and his single-mindedness were a mystery and a slight worry to Ria.

'Would you like to drive down to the country with me to see Danny's parents?' Ria asked her mother.

'Well, maybe. Would Annie be carsick?'

'Not at all, doesn't she love going in the car? Will you make them an apple tart?'

'Why?'

'Oh Mam, out of niceness, that's why. They'll be apologising about everything. You know the way they go on. And if I bring too much they get sort of overwhelmed. You bringing an apple tart is different somehow.'

'You're very complicated, Ria. You always were,' said Nora, but she was pleased to make one, and did a lot of fancy lattice-work with the pastry. .

Ria had written well in advance and the Lynches were expecting them. They were pleased to see little Annie, and Ria took a picture of them with her to add to the ones she had already framed and given to them. They would be part of Annie's life and future in spite of their distance and reserve. She had resolved this. They never saw their other grandchild in England . Rich didn't come back. It was hard, they said. Ria wondered why it was hard for a man who was meant to be doing well in London to come home even just once and show his son to his own parents.

Rosemary had said she should leave them to it and be glad that she didn't have nagging in-laws. But Ria was determined that they stay involved.

They had cold ham, tomatoes and shop bread, which was all they ever served. 'Will I warm up the apple tart, do you think?' Mrs. Lynch asked fearfully, as if faced with an insuperable problem.

How had these timid people begotten Danny Lynch who travelled the country with Barney McCarthy, confident and authoritative, talking to businessmen and county families that would have had his parents doffing their caps and bending their knees?

'And you were down here a few weeks ago and never told us,' Danny's father said.

'No indeed I was not. I think Danny may have been near by, but of course he would have to stay with Barney McCarthy all the time.' Ria was annoyed. She had known that somehow it would get back to them. He had only been a few short miles away, why couldn't he have come over for an hour?

'Well, now, when I was in the creamery there, Marty was saying that his daughter works in the hotel and that the pair of you were there.'

'No, it was Barney who was with him,' Ria said patiently. 'She got it wrong.'

'Oh well, fair enough,' said Danny's father. The incident had lost any interest for him.

Ria knew what had confused the girl; Barney McCarthy had brought Polly with him on the trip. So that's where the mistake lay.

In September 1987, shortly before Annie's fourth birthday party, they were planning a party for the grown-ups in Tara Road.

Danny and Ria were making the list, and Rosemary was there as she so often was.

'Remember a few millionaires for me, I'm getting to my sell-by date,' Rosemary said.

'Oh that will be the day,' Ria laughed.

'Seriously though, has Barney any friends?'

'No, they're all sharks. You'd hate them, Rosemary,' Danny laughed.

'Okay, who else is on the list?'

'Gertie,' said Ria.

'No,' said Danny.

'Of course, Gertie,' said Ria.

'You can't have a party and not have Gertie,' Rosemary supported her.

'But that mad eejit Jack Brennan will turn up looking for a fight or a bottle of brandy or both,' Danny protested.

'Let him, we've coped before,' Ria said. There were the bedsitter tenants, they'd be in the house anyway, and they were nice lads. They would ask Martin and Hilary who would not come but would need the invitation. Ria's mother would come just for half an hour and stay all night. 'Barney and Mona obviously,' Ria said.

'Barney and Polly actually,' Danny said.

There was a two-second pause and then Ria wrote down Barney and Polly.

'Jimmy Sullivan, the dentist, and his wife,' Ria suggested. 'And let's ask Orla King.'

Both Danny and Rosemary frowned. 'Too drinky,' Rosemary said. 'Unreliable.'

'No, she's in AA now. But still too unpredictable,' Danny agreed.

'No, I like her. She's fun.' Ria wrote her down.

'We could ask Colm Barry, the fellow who's going to open a restaurant in the house on the corner.'

'In his dreams he is,' Danny said.

'He is, you know, I'm doing the invitations to the first night.'

'Which may easily be his last night,' Danny said.

Rosemary was annoyed at the way he dismissed Colm, even if it was exactly her own feeling about it all. She decided to say something to irritate Danny. 'Let's ask him anyway, Ria. He has the hots for Orla King, like all those fellows who see no further than the sticky-out bosom and bum.'

Ria giggled. 'We're all turning into matchmakers, aren't we?' she said happily.

Rosemary felt a great wish to smack Ria. Very hard. There she stood, cosy and smug in her married state. She was totally confident and sure of her husband and it never occurred to her that a man like Danny would have many people attracted to him. Orla King might not be the only player on the stage. But did Ria do anything about it? Make any attempt at all to keep his interest and attention?

Of course not. She filled this big kitchen with people and casseroles and trays of fattening cakes. She polished the furniture they bought at auctions for their front room upstairs, but the beautiful round table was covered with catalogues and papers. Ria wouldn't think in a million years of lighting two candles and putting on a good dress to cook dinner for Danny and serve it there.

No, it was this big noisy kitchen with half the road passing through and Danny's armchair for him to fall asleep in when he came home from whatever the day had brought. She looked at Danny and admired his handsome smiling face. He stood there in the kitchen of his big house holding his beautiful daughter in his arms while his wife planned a party for him. A man so confident that he could take a girlfriend to within a few short miles of where his own mother and father lived. And in front of Barney McCarthy too. Rosemary had heard the laughing tale of how Ria's father-in-law had got the wrong end of the stick as usual. Why was it that some men led such lucky lives that nobody would blow a whistle on them? Things were very, very unfair.

Ria baked night and day to have a great spread for the party. Twice she had to refuse invitations from Mona McCarthy and remember not to tell her why she was so busy. She hated doing this to the kind woman who had shown her such generosity. But Danny had been adamant. This was a do that Polly would enjoy. The party would not be mentioned to Mona.

Ria's mother knew the score and would not say anything untoward. Living now so close to Ria meant that she was a constant visitor and aware of everything that went on in the household. Nora Johnson never came to Number 16 Tara Road for an actual meal, she was not a lunch guest or a dinner guest. That way you made yourself unpopular, she always said. Instead she was a presence just before or after every meal, hovering, rattling her keys, planning her departure and next visit. It would have been vastly easier had she come in properly and sat down with everyone else. Ria sighed over it but she put up with her mother. It was comforting, too, to have someone around who knew the whole background to things. Like the Barney McCarthy saga.

'Close your eyes to it, Ria,' she advised on several occasions. 'Men like that have their needs, you know.' It seemed unusually tolerant and forgiving on her mother's part. Usually people's needs were dismissed with a sniff. But Nora Johnson was a very practical person. She said once to Ria and Hilary that she would have forgiven her late husband much more if he had had his needs and dealt with them rather than doing what he did, which was failing to provide her with an adequate life insurance or pension.

'We must have plenty of soft drinks,' Ria said to Danny on the morning of the party.

'Sure, with people like Orla and Colm off the sauce,' he agreed.

'How did you know she was in AA?' Ria asked.

'I don't know, didn't you or Rosemary say? Someone did.'

'I didn't know; I won't say anything,’ Ria said.

'Neither will I,' Danny promised her.

As it happened it was a night when Orla lapsed from her rule. She had arrived early, the first guest in fact, to find Danny Lynch and the wife that he had said meant nothing to him in a deep embrace in their kitchen. The home where Danny Lynch claimed he felt stifled was decorated, warm and welcoming, and about to fill up with their friends. The little girl in a new dress toddled around. She would be four shortly, she told everyone, and she thought that this was her party. She was constantly trying to hold her daddy's hand. This was not the scene that Orla had expected. She thought she might have one whiskey.

When Colm arrived she was already very drunk. 'Let me take you home,' he begged.

'No, I don't want anyone to preach at me,' Orla said, tears running down her face.

'I won't preach, I'll just stay with you. You'd do that for me,' he said.

'No I wouldn't, I'd support you if your fellow was behaving like a shit. If your fellow was here and behaving like a hypocritical rat I'd have a whiskey with you, that's what I'd do, not a rake of sanctimonious claptrap about Higher Powers.'

'I don't have a fellow.' He made a weak joke.

'You don't have anything, Colm, that's your problem.'

'Could be,' he said.

'Where's your sister?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because she's the only one you give a tuppenny damn about. I expect you're sleeping with her.'

'Orla, this isn't helping you and it isn't hurting me.'

'You've never loved anybody.'

'Yes I have.' Colm was aware that Rosemary was beside them. He looked at her for help. 'Should we try and find whoever this fellow is that she thinks she loves?'

'No, that would be singularly inappropriate,' Rosemary said.

'Why?'

'It's the host,' she said succinctly.

'I see.' He gave a grin. 'What do you suggest?'

Rosemary wasted no time. 'A further couple of drinks until she passes out.'

'I couldn't go along with that, I really couldn't.'

'Okay, look the other way. I'll do it.'

'No.'

'Go, Colm. You're not helping.'

'You think I'm very weak,' he said.

'No, I don't for Christ's sake. If you're in AA you're not meant to get a fellow member to pass out. I'll do it.' He stood aside and watched Rosemary pour a large whiskey. 'Go on, drink it, it's only tonight, Orla. One day at a time, isn't that what they say? Tomorrow you need have none. But tonight you need one.'

'I love him,' wept Orla.

'I know you do, but he's a liar, Orla. He takes you to Quentin's; he takes you down the country to hotels with Barney McCarthy and then he plays housey-housey with his wife in front of you. It's not fair.'

'How do you know all this?' Orla was round-mouthed.

'You told me, remember?'

'I never told you. You're Ria's friend.'

'Of course you told me, Orla. How else would I know?'

'When did I tell…?'

'A while back. Listen, come up here and sit in this alcove, it's very quiet and you and I'll have a drink.'

'I hate talking to women at parties.'

'I know, Orla, so do I. But not for long. I'll send one of those nice boys who lives in this house up to talk to you. They were all asking who you were.'

'Were they?'

'Yes, everyone is. You don't want to waste your time on Danny Lynch, professional liar.'

'You're right, Rosemary.'

'I am, believe me.'

'I always thought you were stuck up, I'm sorry.'

'No you didn't. You always liked me deep down.' Rosemary went to find the boys who rented the rooms in Danny and Ria's house. 'There's a real goer up in the alcove on the stairs, she keeps asking where are the good-looking men she met when she came in.'

Colm moved out of the background. 'You should be in the United Nations,' he said to Rosemary.

'But you don't fancy me?' she said archly.

'I admire you too much, I'd be afraid of you.'

'Then you'd be no use to me.' She laughed, and kissed him gently on the cheek.

'I don't sleep with my sister, you know,' he said.

'I didn't think you did for a minute. Don't I know you're having a thing with that publican's wife?'

'How do you know that?' he was amazed.

'I told you it's a small forest and I know everything,' she said with a laugh.

Nora Johnson said afterwards it was amazing how much drink they put away, young fresh-faced people. And wasn't it extraordinary that young, very drunk, girl shouting at everyone. And she had gone into one of the boys' bedsitters. And what a funny chance that someone had opened the door and they had been seen in bed. Danny had said he hadn't thought that any of it was funny. Orla was obviously unused to drink and had reacted badly. She hadn't meant to go to bed with one of those kids. It was out of character for her.

'Oh come on, Danny. She's anybody's, we all knew that back when we worked in the agency,' Rosemary said in her cool voice.

'I didn't know.' He was clipped.

'Oh she was.' Rosemary listed half a dozen names.

'I thought you said that nice man Colm Barry fancied her,' Ria said.

'Oh I think he did a bit back a while, but not after last night's performance.' Rosemary seemed to know everything.

Danny glowered about it all.

'Didn't you enjoy last night?' Ria looked anxiously at him.

'Yes, yes of course I did.' But he was absent, distracted. He had been startled, frightened even, by Orla's behaviour. Barney had been unexpectedly cold and asked him to get her out as quickly and quietly as possible. Polly had looked at him as if he had somehow broken the rules.

That wet Colm Barry had been no help at all. The kids who rented the rooms had been useful at the time but why, oh why, had someone left the door of a bedroom open? Only Rosemary Ryan had been of any practical use, shepherding people on and off stage as if she knew everything that was going on. Which of course she couldn't have.

A couple of weeks later, Hilary arrived with a birthday present for Annie; the first thing she wanted to know was if Barney McCarthy had been wiped out in the stock-market crash.

'I don't think so; Danny never said a word.' Ria was surprised at such a thought.

'Martin said that fellows like Barney who make all their money in England always keep it there, that he'd have lost his shirt,' Hilary said grimly.

'Well he can't have done because we'd have known,' Ria said. 'He seems to be doing just as much if not more.'

'Oh well, that's all right then,' said Hilary.

Sometimes Ria felt that Hilary would have been pleased if there was bad news—she and Martin, who had no money at all, watched the ebb and flow of the stock market with so much interest.

Gertie had been quiet and watchful during the party at Tara Road. Jack was with her, dressed in his one good suit. They had a babysitter and they couldn't stay late. Jack drank orange juice. Gertie's sister Sheila was going to come home from the United States this Christmas. It had never been made clear to Sheila and her American husband Max the extent of the problems with Jack Brennan.

Sheila was inclined to be boastful of her life in New England. Their wealth and status was always treated to an impressive show in her letters home. The fact that Gertie had married such an unstable man had never been mentioned in her own letters or phone calls. Gertie was hoping that the three-week visit could hold without one of Jack's moods.

It depressed her to see that pretty girl Orla behaving so badly. If someone like that could lose control, what hope was there for her Jack? But against all the odds he remained sober. Restless and anxious, but sober. There was a God after all, Gertie confided to Ria as she helped her serve the hot spicy soup and pitta bread.

'I know, Gertie, I know. Every time I look at Danny and little Annie I know this.'

Gertie winced slightly because she had heard one of the girls who worked for her at the launderette say that the good-looking Danny Lynch who lived at the posh end of Tara Road had a fancy woman just like his boss Barney McCarthy had a fancy woman. Gertie had so much wanted it not to be true, she had refused to listen or enquire anything at all about it.

Barney McCarthy never mentioned again the behaviour of Orla King at the party in Tara Road. He had assumed that the relationship would now be at an end. And he had assumed correctly. Danny called to Orla's flat to tell her so. He spoke very directly and left no area for doubt.

'You don't think you're going to get rid of me like that,’ Orla cried. She had indeed managed to stay sober after the upsetting events of the night in Tara Road, but this news was not helping her resolution.

'I don't know what you mean,' Danny said. 'We both went into this knowing the limitations, I was never going to leave Ria for you, we agreed that it would be fun and would hurt nobody.'

'I never agreed to that,' Orla wept.

'Yes, you did, Orla.'

'Well I don't feel that way now,' she said. 'I love you. You're treating me like shit.'

'No, that's not true, and if anyone is treating anyone like shit, it's you. You come to my house, you get as pissed as a fart, you insult my boss, you go to bed with at least one and possibly two of my tenants in full view of everyone. Who's treating whom badly, may I ask?'

'You've not done with me, Danny Lynch. I can still make trouble for you,' Orla said.

'Who'd believe you, Orla? After your behaviour in our house, who'd believe I touched you? Even with a forty-foot pole?'

'Hallo, Rosemary? Orla King here.'

'Hi Orla. Feeling okay again?'

'Yes, I didn't go back on the drink.'

'There. I knew you wouldn't. I told you, didn't I?'

'Yes, you did. I'm not a good judge of people as it turns out. I didn't know you were so nice.'

'Come on, of course you did.'

'No I didn't. Danny Lynch is a cheat and a liar and I'm going round to his house to tell his wife what he's been up to.'

'Don't do that, Orla.'

'Why not, he is a liar. She should know.'

'Listen. You've just agreed I'm your friend, so listen to the advice of a friend.'

'Okay. What is it?'

'Danny's very dangerous. Suppose you did that, he'd hit back. He'd get you sacked.'

'He couldn't do that.'

'He could, Orla, he really could. He could tell your bosses that you photocopied stuff for him, gave them details of deals that were coming up.'

'He wouldn't.'

'What has he to lose? He's secure with Barney. Barney doesn't owe you any favours for what you said to him about that trip to the country.'

'Oh God, did I?'

'Yes I'm afraid you did.'

'I don't remember.'

'That's the problem, isn't it. Listen, believe me, I haven't steered you wrong. You're going to give yourself nothing but grief if you go round to Tara Road with the story. Danny will go for you bald-headed. You know how determined he is. You know how ambitious, how much he wants to get ahead, he won't let you stand in his way.'

'So what do you think…?'

'I think you should let him know you'd like to cool it a bit, men love that sort of thing. Agree to keep it on the back burner, some phrase like that, and once he knows you won't be any problem he'll start coming round to see you again and it will all restore itself to where it was.'

Rosemary could hear the tears of gratitude in Orla's voice. 'You're really so helpful, Rosemary. I don't know why I thought you were stuck-up and difficult. That's exactly what I'll do. And of course he'll come round when he knows there's going to be no drama.'

'That's it, it may take a bit of time of course,' Rosemary warned.

'How much time do you think?'

'Who knows with men? Maybe a few weeks.'

'Weeks?' Orla sounded horrified.

'I know, but it's for the best in the end, isn't it?'

'You're right.' Orla hung up.

Nora Johnson had been to bridge lessons. She was greatly taken by the game and somewhat inclined to tell lengthy tales about some hand that was dealt, called and played. She seemed to have the same kind of recall for bridge as she had about every film star she had ever seen on the screen.

Ria had refused absolutely to learn. 'I've seen too many people get obsessed by it, Mam. I'm bad enough already, I don't want myself spending five hours every afternoon wondering are all the diamonds out or who has the seven of spades.'

'It's not like that at all,' Nora scoffed. 'But it's your loss. I'm going to suggest that I get some games going for them up in St Rita's.'

And it was a huge success. There were demon bridge sessions in one of the residents' lounges at the retirement home, often with as many as three tables playing. Nora Johnson played there almost every afternoon wherever they needed to make up a four. There were not enough hours in the day for her.

And as well as organising their games she organised the lives of the residents, advising them, cajoling and contradicting them. She was never happier than laying down rules and making decisions for other people. Including her daughter Ria.

'I wish you'd pray to Saint Ann ,' Nora Johnson told her daughter.

'Oh Mam, there's no Saint Ann ,' Ria said exasperated.

'Of course there's a Saint Ann ,' said her mother scornfully. 'Who else do you think was the mother of Our Lady. And her husband was Saint Joachim. Saint Ann's feast is the 28th of July and I always pray to her for you then, and say that basically you're a good girl and you'll remember your name-day.'

'But it's not my name-day. We're not in Russia or Greece , Mam, we're in Ireland and my name is Ria anyway, or Maria. Not Ann.'

'You were baptised Ann Maria, your own daughter is called Ann after the mother of Our Lady.'

'No, it's because we like the name.'

'There!' her mother was triumphant.

'But what should I be praying for, even supposing she was there listening? Haven't we got everything?'

'You need another child.' Her mother spoke with pursed lips.

' Saint Ann could do it. You may think it's superstitious but believe me it's true.'

Ria knew that if she stopped taking the contraceptive pill that would do it too. Something she had been thinking about a lot, and must discuss with Danny. He had seemed preoccupied about business recently, but maybe this was the time to bring the subject up.

'I might pray to Saint Ann,' she said gently to her mother.

'That's the girl,' said Nora Johnson.

Gertie's sister Sheila came home for Christmas.

'I must have her to a lunch here,' said Ria.

'Oh God no,' Danny said. 'Not over Christmas. Not that fellow with his fists here over Christmas, please.'

'Don't give a dog a bad name, Danny. Wasn't he great now at the party?'

'Well, if standing like a block of wood was great then he was.'

'Don't be an old grouch, it's not like you.'

Danny sighed. 'Sweetheart, you're always filling the house with people. We get no peace.'

'I am not.' She was hurt.

'But you are, this is one of the few times there's just us and Annie here. There are people coming and going all the time.'

'That's the meanest thing I ever heard. Who's here more often than Barney? He's here about four times a week, and with Polly one day or Mona another. Now I don't ask them, do I?'

'No.'

'So?'

'So it's not very restful, that's all.'

'Forget Gertie's sister then,' Ria said. 'It was just an idea.'

'Look… I don't mean…'

'No, I said forget it, we'll be restful.'

'Ria, come here…' He dragged her towards him. 'You are the world's worse sulker,' he said and kissed her on the nose. 'All right, what day will we have them?'

'I knew you'd be reasonable. What about the Sunday after Christmas Day?'

'No, that's the McCarthys. We can't miss that.'

'Right, the Monday then, no one will have gone back to work. It will be stay-at-home Ireland . Will we ask your mother and father?'

'What for?' Danny asked.

'They can see Annie, see all that we've done to the place, meet these Americans, you know.'

'They'd be no good, and honestly I don't think they'd enjoy it,' Danny said.

Ria paused. 'Sure,' she said. And, after all, she had won over Gertie's sister.

Sheila Maine and her husband Max had not been in Ireland for six years. Not since their wedding day. They now had a son Sean, the same age as Annie. Sheila seemed astounded at how well Ireland was doing, how prosperous the people were, and how successful were the small businesses she saw everywhere. When she had left to go to America to seek her fortune at the age of eighteen, Ireland had been a much poorer country. 'Look what has happened in less than ten years!'

Ria felt that, not unlike her own sister Hilary who seemed to rejoice in bad news rather than good, Sheila Maine was not entirely pleased to see the upturn in the economy. What Sheila really seemed to resent was the great social life that people had in Dublin . 'It's not at all like this in the States,' she confided on the evening before Christmas Eve when there was a girls' dinner out in Colm's new restaurant. 'I can't imagine all these people laughing and talking to each other at different tables. It's all changed a great deal from my time.'

Colm had been having a series of rehearsals, inexpensive meals where friends would try out the recipes and the ambience at a very reduced cost. This way they could iron out some of the wrinkles before the restaurant opened officially in March. Only those who were within his group were allowed in. Colm's beautiful and silent sister Caroline worked with him, serving and acting as hostess. 'Smile a little more, Caroline,' they heard him urging her from time to time. She was a nervous girl, she might never be seen as fronting a successful restaurant for her brother.

Sheila was thrilled with it all. And on Christmas Eve they were going in to Grafton Street where a live radio broadcast was done on The Gay Byrne Show. Perhaps she might even be called upon to speak as a returned emigrant. Anything was possible in the Ireland of today. Look at all Gertie's smart friends, with their good jobs or their beautiful houses. Gertie herself was not particularly well off; her launderette was at the less smart end of Tara Road. And her husband Jack, though charming and handsome, seemed vague about his prospects. But they had a business, and a two-year-old baby boy. And everyone was so confident. Sheila Maine's sigh was so like Hilary Moran's sigh that Ria could hardly wait for the two women to meet at lunch in her house.

And indeed they did get on very well. Gertie and Ria stood back and watched them bonding together. The quiet husband, Max Maine, who came from a Ukrainian background and knew little or nothing about Ireland , seemed ill at ease. Only Danny of course was able to draw him out with his warm smile and his interest in everything new. 'Tell me about the kind of houses you have out there, Max. Are they all that whiteboard we see pictures of?'

Max was frank and explained that in the part of Connecticut where he and Sheila lived, there weren't many dream houses standing in their own grounds. Danny was equally frank and expanded on how they had managed to get a big house like this one in Tara Road by being in the right place at the right time, and by having three of their rooms occupied by youngsters who helped to pay the rent. Visibly Max relaxed with half a bottle of Russian vodka which they sipped from small glasses. Ria watched as Danny captivated her friend's brother-in-law. He hadn't wanted them to come and yet he was now giving his all. Jack, having been frightened into some kind of truce, sat drinkless and wordless in a corner.

Afterwards, as they washed up, Ria gave Danny a hug. 'You are marvellous, and weren't you rewarded in the end? He is a nice man, Max, isn't he?'

'Sweetheart, he hasn't a word to throw to a dog. But you're so good to people when they come here for me, I thought I'd be nice to him for you, and for poor Gertie, who isn't a bad old stick. That's all.'

Somehow Ria felt cheated. She had really believed that Danny was enjoying his conversation with Max Maine. It was upsetting to realise that it had all been an act.

Sheila wanted to know was there a good fortune-teller around before she went back home. A lot of her neighbours in America went to psychics, some of them very powerful, but they wouldn't know you like an Irish woman would. 'I'll take all you three girls … my treat,' she said. You couldn't not like Sheila. Bigger and much more untidy than Gertie, she had the same anxious eyes and the edges of her mouth turned down in sadness to leave this place where everyone was having such a good time.

Ria longed to tell her that they were all putting on a show for her, but that would have been to let Gertie down.

'Come on, let's all go to Mrs. Connor,' Gertie suggested.

'She didn't get things right for me years back, but I hear she's red-hot at the moment. Why not, it's an adventure, isn't it?' Rosemary agreed. The last time they had been there, Rosemary had said nothing about what had been predicted, just that it was not relevant to her life plans. Maybe it would be different now.

'Well, she did tell me my baby would be a girl. I know it was a fifty-fifty chance but she was right. Let's go to her,' Ria said. She had stopped taking the pill back in September. But as yet the time had not been ripe to tell Danny. She was waiting for the proper moment.

Mrs. Connor must have had five or ten people a night coming to her since they were there last. Hundreds of eager faces watching her, thousands of hopeful hands held out, and many more thousands of paper banknotes crossing the table. There was no evidence whatsoever of any increased affluence in her caravan. Her face showed no sign of any contentment in having seen the futures of so many people.

She told Sheila, having heard her accent, that she lived across the sea possibly in the United States , that she was married reasonably happily, but that she would like to live back in Ireland .

'And will I live back in Ireland ?' Sheila asked beseechingly.

'Your future is in your own hands,' Mrs. Connor said gravely, and somehow this cheered Sheila a lot. She considered the money well spent.

To Gertie, with her anxious eyes, Mrs. Connor said that there was an element of sadness and danger in her life and she should be watchful for those she loved. Since Gertie was never anything but watchful for Jack this seemed a good summing-up of affairs.

Rosemary sat and held out her hand, marvelling as she looked around her at the squalor of the surroundings. This woman must take in, tax-free, something like a hundred thousand pounds a year. How could she bear to live like this? 'You were here before,' the woman said to her.

'That's right, some years back.'

'And did what I saw happen for you?'

'No, you saw me in deep trouble, with no friends, no success. It couldn't have been more wrong. I'm in no trouble, I have lots of friends and my business is thriving. But you can't win them all and you got the others right.' Rosemary smiled at her, one professional woman to another.

Mrs. Connor raised her eyes from the palm. 'I didn't see that, I saw you had no real friends, and that there was something you wanted which you couldn't get. That's what I still see.' Her voice was certain and sad.

Rosemary was a little shaken. 'Well, do you see me getting married?' she asked, forcing a lightness into her voice.

'No,' Mrs. Connor said.

Ria was the last to go in. She looked at the fortune-teller with sympathy. 'Aren't you very damp here? That old heater isn't great for you.'

'I'm fine,' Mrs. Connor said.

'Couldn't you live somewhere better, Mrs. Connor? Can't you see that in your hand?' Ria was concerned.

'We don't read our own hands. It's a tradition.'

'Well, somebody else might…'

'Can you show me your palm, please, lady. We're here for you to know are you pregnant again?'

Ria's jaw fell open in amazement. 'And am I?' she said in a whisper.

'Yes, you are, lady. A little boy this time.' Ria felt a stinging behind her eyes. No more than her mother's famous Saint Ann , dead and gone for two thousand years, Mrs. Connor barely alive in her caravan couldn't know the future, but she was mightily convincing. She had been right about Annie, remember, and right about Hilary having no children at all. Possibly there were ways outside the normal channels of knowing these things. She stood up as if to go. 'Don't you want to hear about your business and the travel overseas?'

'No, that's not on. That's somebody else's life creeping in on my palm,' Ria said kindly.

Mrs. Connor shrugged. 'I see it, you know. A successful business, where you are very good at it and happy too.'

Ria laughed. 'Well, my husband will be pleased, I'll tell him. He's working very hard these days, he'll be glad I'm going to be a tycoon.'

'And tell him about the baby that's coming, lady. He doesn't know that yet,' said Mrs. Connor, coughing and drawing her cardigan around her for warmth.

Danny was not really pleased when he heard the news. 'This was something we said we would discuss together, sweetheart.'

'I know, but there never is time to discuss anything, Danny, you work so hard.'

'Well, isn't that all the more reason we should discuss things? Barney's so stretched these days, money is tight, and some of the projects have huge risk attached to them. We might not be able to afford another baby.'

'Be reasonable. How much is a baby going to cost? We have all the baby things for him. We don't have to get a cot, a pram or any of the things that cost money.' She was stung with disappointment.

'Ria, it's not that I don't want another child—you know that -it's just that we did agree to discuss it, and this isn't the best time. In three or four years we could afford it better.'

'We won't have to pay anything for him, I tell you, until he is three or four.'

'Stop calling it him, Ria. We can't know at this stage.'

'I know already.'

'Because of some fortune-teller! Sweetheart, will you give me a break?'

'She was right about my being pregnant. I went to the doctor next day.'

'So much for joint decisions.'

'Danny, that's not fair. That's the most unfair thing I ever heard. Do I ask to be part of all the decisions you make for this house? I do bloody not. I don't know when you're going to be in or out, when Barney McCarthy will come and closet himself with you for hours. I don't know if we are to see his wife or his mistress with him each time he turns up. I don't ask to discuss if I can go out to work again, and let Mam look after Annie for us, because you like the house comfortable for you whatever time you come home. I'd like a cat but you're not crazy about them, so that's that. I'd like us to have more time on our own, the two of us, but you need to have Barney around, so that's that. And I forgot to take the pill for a bit and suddenly it's a matter of joint decisions. Where are the other joint decisions, I ask you? Where are they?' The tears were running down her face. The delight in the new life that was starting inside her seemed almost wiped out.

Danny looked at her in amazement. His own face crumpled as he realised the extent of her loneliness and how much she had felt excluded. 'I can't tell you how sorry I am. I truly can't tell you how cheap and selfish I feel listening to you. Everything you say is true. I have been ludicrous about work. I worry so much in case we'll lose what we've got. I'm so sorry, Ria.' He buried his face in her and she stroked his head with sounds of reassurance. 'And I'm delighted we're having a little boy. And suppose the little boy's a little girl like Annie, I'll be delighted with that too.'

Ria thought about telling him what the fortune-teller had said about her having a business of her own one day, and overseas travel. But she decided it would break the mood. And it was nonsense anyway.

'I know you're pregnant again, Ria. Mam told me,' Hilary said when she came to call.

'I was about to tell you. I forgot what a bush telegraph Mam is. It's probably being broadcast on the midday news by now,' Ria said apologetically.

'Are you pleased?' Hilary asked.

'Very. And it will be good for Annie to have someone to play with, though she'll probably hate him at first.'

'Him?'

'Yes, I'm pretty sure. Listen, Hilary, it's hard for me to talk about this with you. You never want to talk about, well, about your own situation, and there was a time when we could talk about anything, you and I.'

'I don't mind talking about it.' Hilary was offhand.

'Well, have you thought of adopting a baby?'

'I have,' Hilary said. 'But Martin hasn't.'

'Why ever not?'

'It might be too expensive. He thinks that the cost of educating and clothing a child is prohibitive these days. And suppose it went to third-level education, well, you're talking thousands and thousands over a lifetime.'

'But if you'd had your own you'd have paid that.'

'With difficulty you know, and the other way there'd be the feeling we're doing it for someone else's child.'

'Oh there wouldn't. Of course there wouldn't. Once you get the baby it's yours.'

'So they say, but I don't know.' Hilary nodded doubtfully over her mug of tea.

'And is it easy to adopt?' Ria persisted.

'Not nowadays, they're all keeping their kids, you see, and getting an allowance from the State. I'd put an end to that, I tell you.'

'And have them terrified out of their lives, like when we were young.'

'It didn't terrify you,' Hilary said as she so often did.

'Well, I mean the generation before us then. Remember all the stories, girls committing suicide or running off to England and everything, never knowing what happened. Surely it's much better the way it is?'

'Easy for you to say, Ria. If you saw that little rossie up at the school, with her stomach stuck out in front of her, and now it appears that her mother doesn't want to bring it up, so there's more drama.'

'Maybe you and Martin…'

'Live in the real world, Ria. Could you imagine us working in that school, bringing up that little tinker's baby, paying through the nose for everything for it? Right pair of laughing-stocks we'd be.'

Ria thought that Hilary found the world too harsh and unloving a place but then she was in a poor position to try and console her sister. Ria had so much and in many ways Hilary really did have so little.

Orla King was back at her AA meetings again. Colm was as friendly to her as ever. But she felt awkward, particularly with imperfect recollection of the party in Tara Road. Finally she brought the subject up.

'I meant to thank you for trying to help me that night, Colm.' It wasn't easy to find the words.

'It's okay, Orla. We all go through it, that's why we're here. That was then, this is now.'

'Now is a bit bleak though.'

'Only if you allow it to be. Try something different. I've felt so tired since I left the bank, trying to set up this restaurant business, that I haven't had time to miss the drink and fell sorry for myself.'

'What can I do except type?'

'You said once you'd like to be a model.'

'I'm too old and too fat, you have to be sixteen and look half-starved.'

'You don't sing badly. Can you play the piano?'

'Yes, but I only sing when I'm drunk.'

'Have you tried it sober? It might be more tuneful and you'd remember the words.'

'Sorry to be so helpless, Colm. I'm like a tiresome child, I know. But suppose I could get a few songs together, then where would I try for a job?'

'I could give you the odd spot when my place opens… not real money, but you might get discovered. And of course Rosemary knows half of Dublin . She might know people in restaurants, hotels, clubs.'

'I don't think Rosemary's too keen on me these days. I did fool around with her best friend's husband.'

Colm grinned. 'Well, at least that's all you're describing it as now, fooling around, not the great love affair of the century.'

'He's a shit,' Orla said.

'He's all right really, he just couldn't resist you. Very few of us could.' He grinned at her and she thought again what an attractive man he was. Since he had left the bank he wore much more casual clothes, open-necked shirts in bright colours; his black curly hair and big dark eyes made him look slightly foreign, Spanish or Italian. And he was a rock of sense too. Handsome, single, sensible.

Orla sighed. 'You make me feel much better, Colm. Why couldn't I fall in love with someone normal like you?'

'Oh I'm not normal at all, we all know that,' Colm joked.

A look of unease crossed Orla's pretty round face. She hoped that when she had been drunk she had said nothing about the over-protectiveness Colm always had about his silent beautiful sister. No, surely bad and all as she had been that night she'd never have hinted at anything as dark as that.

Brian was born on the 15th of June and this time Danny was beside Ria and holding her hand.

Annie said to everyone that she was quite pleased with her new brother, but not very pleased. This made people laugh so she said it over and over. Brian was all right, she said, but he wasn't able to go to the bathroom on his own, and he couldn't talk and he took up a lot of Mum and Dad's time. Still, Dad had assured her again and again that she was his little princess, the only princess he would ever have or want. And Mam had said that Annie was the very best girl not only in Ireland , or Europe, but on Earth and quite possibly the planets as well. So Annie Lynch didn't have anything to worry about. And Brian was going to take ages before he could do anything like catch up on her. So she was very relaxed about the whole thing.

Gertie's baby Katy was born just after Brian, and Sheila Maine's daughter Kelly around the same time.

'Maybe they'll all be friends when they grow older.' The future was always happy and filled with people for Ria.

'They might all hate each other, you can just see Brian saying she wants me to be friends with these awful people… They'll make their own friends no matter what you say.'

T know, it's just that it would be nice.'

Rosemary showed her irritation. 'Ria, you're amazing, you're so into never changing things, never moving on. It's ridiculous. You're not friendly with the children of your mother's friends, are you?'

'Mam didn't have any friends,' Ria said.

'Nonsense, I never met anyone with more friends, she knows the whole neighbourhood.'

'They're only acquaintances,' Ria said. 'Anyway, there's nothing wrong with my hoping that friendships will continue into the next generation.'

'No, but not very adventurous.'

'When you have children won't you want them to be friends with Annie and Brian?'

'They'll be far too young if they ever materialise, which is unlikely,' Rosemary said.

Annie had been listening carefully; these days she understood a lot of what was going on. 'Why don't you have children?' she asked.

'Because I'm too busy,' Rosemary said truthfully. 'I work very hard and it takes up a lot of time. You see, all the time your mummy spends on you and Brian? I don't think I could be unselfish enough to do that.'

'I bet you'd love it if you tried it,' Ria said.

'Stop it, Ria. You sound like my mother.'

'I mean it.'

'So does she. So does Gertie, for God's sake, she was trying to get me broody the other day. Imagine the Brennan family being held up to anyone as an example of domestic bliss!'

Gertie didn't bring her two children to Tara Road. They lived over the launderette not far away, and she always felt that they would be discontented if they saw how others lived. Also the atmosphere in Ria's house was so different from their own. A big kitchen where everyone gathered, something always cooking in the big stove, the smell of newly baked cinnamon cakes, or fresh herb bread.

Not like Gertie's house where nothing was ever left out on the gas cooker. Just in case, just in case it might coincide with one of the times that Jack was upset. Because if Jack was upset it could be thrown at anyone. But Gertie came on her own to Number 16 from time to time and did a little housework for Ria. Anything that would give her the few pounds that Jack didn't know about. Just something that might tide them over when there was trouble.

Rosemary's business was now very high profile. She was often photographed at the races, gallery openings or at theatre first nights. She dressed very well and she kept her clothes immaculately. Whenever she visited, Ria had taken to offering her a nylon housecoat to wear in case the children smeared her with whatever they had their hands in.

'Come on, that's going a bit far,' Rosemary laughed the first time.

'No it isn't. I'm the one who'd have to spend six years apologising if they got ice cream or pureed carrots all over that gorgeous cream wool. Put it on, Rosemary, and give me some peace.'

Rosemary thought they could have more peace if they went upstairs to that magnificent front room and drank their wine there rather than being in what was like a giant playpen with children's toys and things all over the floor and Ria leaping up to stir things and lift more and more trays of baking out of the oven. But it was useless to try and change her ways. Ria Lynch believed that the world revolved around her family and her kitchen.

Danny saw her in the pink nylon coat and was annoyed. 'Rosemary, you don't need to dress up to play with the children.'

'Your wife's idea,' Rosemary shrugged.

'I didn't want them messing up her lovely clothes.'

'Wait till she has kids of her own,' Danny said darkly. 'Then we'll see some messed-up clothes.'

'I wouldn't bet on it, Danny,' Rosemary said. Her smile was bright, but she felt that she was being put under a lot of pressure from all sides. It wasn't enough apparently to look well, dress well, and run a successful business. No, not nearly enough. Apparently there was no such thing as a private life in this city. Rosemary resented the excessive interest people had in marrying others off. Why was she not allowed to have a lover that no one knew of, or indeed a series of them? She was successful and glamorous but so what? You had to find a mate and breed children as well, otherwise it counted for nothing in people's eyes. She was getting it everywhere, but particularly on her weekly visits to her mother's house.

Mrs. Ryan was becoming intolerable. Rosemary was now in her late twenties and with no marriage prospects. Her sister Eileen was no consolation to her. Just be yourself, be free. Don't listen to the old voices, Eileen would say if ever Rosemary grumbled about their mother. Which was fine for Eileen living as she did with the powerful Stephanie, a lawyer, and working for her as her clerk. They had an apartment where they had a regular Sunday afternoon drinks party. It was almost like a salon where everyone was welcome, men and women, but Rosemary felt they despised her for dressing so well. The term 'frocky' was used a lot as a derogatory description for women that Eileen and Stephanie thought were dressing just to please male egos.

Yet in ways Rosemary envied them. They were sure and happy in their lives and they wished her well. 'I'm demented with Eileen and Stephanie producing soulful ladies for me, my mother despairing that I'm a lost cause, and every customer that I'm nice to thinking I'm about to perform every known kind of sexual favour to keep his business.'