It Started With Paris Read online

  At twenty-three, Ilona looked up to her boss and mentor with unflinching devotion, despite the fact that Leila was only six years her senior. Leila had taken her on as junior in the publicity department two years ago. Ilona’s grammar had still been a bit shaky and she’d worried about her ability to write proper emails, but she’d wanted desperately to progress in the company.

  What would Ilona think if she knew that the boss she admired was not a strong professional woman but someone who’d felt entirely broken for the past six months?

  Of course, she would never know. Nobody would know.

  We wanted different things, Leila had told people blandly.

  Ilona started running through their to-do list.

  They’d been busy since Leila arrived at nine on the dot, even though she had been out late the night before at a work event. Leila Martin had not become one of the most valued members of Eclipse Films’ staff by taking time off.

  She was good at what she did – managing director Eamonn Devlin wouldn’t have hired her otherwise. She had worked hard to get where she was, devoting hours to the job and giving up weekends when required. Plus she looked like a magazine illustration of a successful media PR, with a wardrobe of chic trousers and elegant silk shirts or T-shirts, and never a streaked blonde hair out of place. While careful not to outshine whichever star she was accompanying, she had indefinable style and looked smart enough to make people notice her.

  This morning, fifth on the to-do list was an email from a young actress’s manager setting out her hotel requirements for when she arrived in Dublin to attend the premiere of a movie that was barely a nod away from straight-to-video in Leila’s opinion.

  ‘Yellow orchids, not white,’ she read out. ‘White is so last century, isn’t it, Ilona? Muslin curtains on the windows in her suite.’

  ‘I’ll check what sort of curtains they have in the presidential suite in the Centennial,’ said Ilona, pen poised over her notebook.

  ‘They can swap to muslin, no problem,’ Leila said. ‘When the white orchid/muslin curtain/Zen garden on the terrace thing was big, they bought lots. Plus, I think they have enough Zen white sand in the basement to make one hell of a sandcastle. Phone Sergio and kindly ask him if housekeeping can get the muslin curtains up. Right, next.’

  ‘Omigod, you know everything,’ said Ilona admiringly.

  ‘No,’ said Leila. ‘It’s only that you get used to being asked for crazy stuff.’

  They continued to run through the list of requests relating to every detail of the actress’s visit. It was one of those aspects of a publicity director’s job that could be very time-consuming and required vast diplomatic skills. Publicising films for Eclipse was a joy in so many ways: Leila spent time in the film world, met some of the world’s most fascinating and talented actors, directors and producers and saw them without their public masks on.

  The true professionals flew into the country, did their job with sparkling expertise, and flew out again without having requested more than wheat- and lactose-free meals in their hotel suites, approval on big interviews, and sometimes a driver for the day to see some of the sights.

  And then there were the people who were determined to prove that they were so special, normal rules didn’t apply.

  Hideously expensive scented candles, vintage champagne on every available surface, and new Frette four-thousand-euro-a-pair sheets were commonplace among this tribe. Ditto raw food/green juices on call 24/7, rare fruits, and calorific desserts that might not be touched but that had to be there just in case the juicing got boring.

  However, there were limits. When one would-be star demanded that Eclipse supply puppies to cavort at her photo shoot, Leila put her foot down. She would not allow anyone to indulge themselves at the expense of animals. A phone call to the manager of the star in question had done the trick. ‘Tell her we follow ethical PETA rules,’ Leila told him calmly. It worked a treat. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of PETA.

  Drugs were another no-no.

  ‘Not on our dime or our time,’ Eamonn Devlin said to his team when a wild young actor – not in an Eclipse movie at that moment, thankfully – broke up a hotel room in Paris while under the influence of crystal meth. ‘Anyone who wants it can source their own coke/OxyContin/whatever.’

  When Devlin spoke, people listened.

  Muslin curtains and specific flowers, however, were perfectly commonplace.

  ‘Irish music CDs, for Irish atmosphere/dancing,’ read Leila in amusement. ‘This is sweet, really. You’ll have to get an iPod and download some jigs and reels.’

  Ilona blinked at her.

  ‘Sorry – ask Marc or Sinead,’ Leila said. ‘You’ve turned into such an Irish girl, I forget you’re Hungarian and don’t know all our insane ways.’

  ‘Not insane,’ Ilona replied. ‘I’m proud to be Irish. Or I will be, in another year.’

  ‘You need to have the Irish dancing part of the induction, then,’ Leila said solemnly. ‘I Irish-danced for eight years and have all the medals. I’ll show you sometime.’

  It wasn’t easy, but she managed not to grin. Ilona, who never quite knew whether Leila was joking or not, gaped at her wide-eyed.

  ‘OK, I’m kidding. I have a few Irish dancing medals, but neither love nor money would get me to dance now. I was never Riverdance quality. I was one of the ones who shuffled down the back of the line for the complicated treble steps. I got the medals out of pity.

  ‘Right, back to the list. A choice of mineral water and Coke Zero. This is almost easy, Ilona. No temperatures for the drinks, no requirements for specially imported vodka or newly installed toilet seats. This girl is either a nice, classy person or else nobody’s told her what some folks ask for. She might be one of the normal ones – or as normal as you can be when you’re famous all around the planet and get papped as soon as you step outside your home without full make-up.’ Leila grinned. ‘I’m so glad I work on this side of that world and not the star side.’

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Ilona fervently.

  Once they’d finished working their way through Leila’s to-do list, Ilona headed off with her notepad and Leila turned to her computer, already filling up with a dizzying number of emails. It was almost a pleasure to come across spam in her inbox – at least those messages she could just bin, not bothering with a reply. If only they were all spam, she thought wistfully.

  At half five that evening, one hundred and fifty miles south-west of the Eclipse offices in their modern glass office block, Susie Martin left the hospital in Waterford, got into her car and drove off slowly in the direction of Bridgeport. She always found hospitals vaguely scary, even when she wasn’t sitting in A&E waiting for news of her mother after a serious car accident. Coffee from the machine in the waiting area had helped, but even so, she felt shaky and not herself. Seeing her mother bruised and in shock had added to the stress of watching people with cuts, broken bones and pale, pained faces waiting alongside her.

  Still in a state of anxiety, Susie waited till she got back to the outskirts of the city and one of the parking slots at a small convenience store before she rang her sister.

  Leila never failed to take her calls, but Susie always had the feeling that she was interrupting her sister’s life: a life full of movie stars, premieres and important meetings. Susie herself kept her phone on silent when she was at work in the telecoms call centre, although she left it on her desk in case Jack’s school or Mollsie, the childminder, rang. At home in the evening a caller might interrupt her helping Jack with one of his senior infants projects – like making a dinosaur out of kitchen paper cylinders, tinfoil and recycled bits and bobs – but that was it. No one would ever ring her and find that she couldn’t talk at that exact moment because she was running a press conference for a Hollywood A-lister with thirty journalists and a cadre of TV reporters in attendance. Leila’s life was big, while hers … hers was very normal.

  Instantly Susie felt the surge of guilt at even thinking such a thi
ng. Her life contained Jack: precious, joyous, special Jack. The light of her life.

  But the guilt couldn’t stop the knowledge that she was lonely. Lonely for the sister she’d once been so close to before Tynan had wrenched Leila away. And lonely at the thought that she’d never feel romantic love again, because she willingly gave most of her time to her precious son, the rest to her mum, and that left no time over to even think of having a man in her life.

  Plus, men her age didn’t exactly line up to date single mothers, did they? They were avoiding women with ticking biological clocks, not leaping into relationships with ready-made mothers who couldn’t fly off to Barcelona for a weekend just for the fun of it.

  She unclicked her seat belt and sat waiting while her sister’s phone rang.

  ‘Susie,’ answered Leila in surprise.

  ‘It’s Mum,’ said Susie, not bothering with formalities, ‘she was in a car accident.’

  She heard the sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Is she—?’

  ‘She’s OK. Very lucky, the doctor said.’ Susie got out of the car and went into the store, phone clamped to her ear. ‘She’s fractured her hip.’

  ‘Oh God …’ muttered her sister.

  ‘Her poor face is all bruised – which obviously isn’t the worst thing, but she looks so terrible. Some old fella in an ancient Fiat ploughed into her at a red light. He wasn’t going very fast or it would have been a lot worse. She’s pretty shaken up, though.’

  ‘Poor Mum,’ said Leila weakly, and Susie could hear the huskiness of tears in her sister’s voice.

  Susie picked up a shopping basket. Hurrying through the store, she grabbed some milk and groceries for dinner, although who knew when she’d be eating, because first she had pick up her mother’s dog and then drive to the childminder’s to collect Jack. She threw in a jumbo bar of chocolate as well. That was the low-carb, low-sugar diet out the window.

  ‘Susie, are you listening?’ said Leila.

  ‘It’s a bad line,’ Susie replied, realising Leila had been asking questions. ‘I’m stressed,’ she added with some irritation. ‘It’s my half-day at work, so I had to get Jack picked up from school while I was at the hospital. Before I collect him, I have to go over to Mum’s to get Pixie, as I promised that we’d have her while Mum’s in hospital. So I have to walk the damn dog too, and she’ll probably eat the couch if she’s left on her own because Mum lets her do whatever she wants …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Leila quietly. ‘I know you have to do everything. You’re brilliant, Susie. You really are. I’ll be there to see her as soon as I can. What are they going to do? Is she going to be OK?’

  ‘I think so,’ Susie said, still testy and hating herself for it. She and Leila had once been so close – like twins, people used to say – and now she was snapping at her sister. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit shaky,’ she added out of guilt. ‘They’re doing X-rays because she’ll need surgery and probably a pin inserted. They won’t say exactly till the orthopaedic team decide. She was on a trolley for ages and was in agony until they finally gave her an injection.’

  ‘Oh, Susie, poor Mum,’ Leila said, and began to cry. ‘If I ring the hospital now, will I be able to talk to her, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Susie said. ‘She didn’t have her mobile. You can ring the nurses’ station, but I don’t think they’ll bring the phone to the bed—’

  Leila appeared to have stopped listening, because she interrupted.

  ‘I think she’d be asleep due to the meds,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to the nurses.’

  ‘You could try, but she might be in surgery. I’m not going in again tonight. They said they’ll phone me afterwards. I have to get Jack. He’s never slept over at Mollsie’s.’

  ‘Mollsie?’

  ‘My childminder,’ said Susie, with a certain grimness. Even the girl at the desk beside her at work, a girl who lived for partying, knew Mollsie’s name. Susie’s sister, Jack’s godmother, didn’t.

  Susie felt the familiar anger flood her, anger fanned by the fear and anxiety of a day spent in hospital worrying. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t remember that, Leila. Mollsie and Mum are the people who help me with Jack. There is nobody else.’

  For a second there was silence on the phone.

  Susie hadn’t meant the statement to sound quite so stark: that she was alone with a small child because his father hadn’t been interested, and that her once best friend, her sister, wasn’t around for her any more.

  But it was said now, it couldn’t be unsaid, and she wasn’t sorry.

  She understood that Leila was broken-hearted, but Tynan had taken Leila away from Susie and their mum long before he’d run off. And though he was gone, Leila still hadn’t come back to them.

  ‘It’s five forty-five now,’ Leila was saying awkwardly. ‘I’ll leave the office in half an hour, go home to pick up some things and I can be at the hospital by nine.’

  Susie sighed to herself. Leila had always hated being in the wrong, so she was simply ignoring her sister’s comments.

  Fine.

  ‘Mum won’t be able to talk to you,’ she said evenly. ‘She could be in surgery.’

  ‘I think—’ began Leila.

  Susie was at the cash desk now.

  ‘I have to go, Leila. Bye.’

  ‘Bye,’ said Leila, but Susie had already pushed the ‘end’ button, so her sister was left talking to dead air.

  There were a few missed calls on Susie’s phone when she got back to the car. One from a work friend and two from Mollsie telling her that Jack was fine and not to worry. Jack loved his mother’s half-day, when she could pick him up from school instead of Mollsie and they’d have an adventure: the park in summer or hot chocolate and a DVD snuggled up in front of the fire on wintry afternoons.

  The stress of the day blasted through her, and Susie sat in her parked car and wept.

  She was only thirty-one, and yet sometimes she felt ancient. Compared to the other single women at work, she was ancient. Most of the people in the call centre were young, doing this job as a stopgap. They had wild weekends, booked amazing holidays on the Internet and came back with stories of trips to places she’d only seen in photos.

  Susie spent her money shopping wisely for food, buying clothes in cheap shops, saving up for Christmas and their rare holidays. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a wild weekend – probably with Leila and Katy before Tynan had come along.

  When Jack was asleep, long eyelashes sweeping over still chubby cheeks, she looked at him with such love and gratefulness that he was in her life. Yet this small boy with his hopes and dreams was her responsibility, and there was no one with whom to share it. She wouldn’t trade her life with Jack for the world, but it was tough sometimes, no doubt about it.

  And lonely. She’d felt lonely ever since Tynan had come into her sister’s life. Susie had taken one look at him – all lean and handsome, carefully styled so as to give the impression that he’d just flung on his clothes, though she could tell he’d spent hours in the bathroom fixing his hair, practising his moody look – and known he’d break Leila’s heart.

  He’d tried to charm Susie that first time they met in Bridgeport.

  ‘How come a gorgeous girl like you isn’t beating men off with a stick?’ he’d asked, patting her knee in a way that was half affectionate, half flirtatious.

  ‘I’ve a big stick,’ she’d said grimly. ‘I’ve beaten them all away. All the losers and users, anyway.’

  Tynan had looked at her thoughtfully. He was too clever to rise to her comment, but she could tell that he knew she’d assigned him to the loser and user category.

  He’d flicked his charm on to her mother then, and afterwards Susie had warned Leila about him.

  ‘He’ll dump you, Leila,’ she’d said earnestly. ‘You’re not even yourself around him. It’s like you’re … like you’re someone else, someone you think he’d like. You can’t change yourself for a guy.’

>   Her eyes had taken in the un-Leila-like tight black jeans and spindly heels, the clingy top, the rock-chick tousled hair and more eye make-up than normal.

  ‘I like how I look,’ Leila had said furiously. ‘You’re just jealous because I’ve finally found someone and you haven’t.’

  The sisters had stared at each other in sudden silence. They didn’t do harsh words in the Martin family. Dolores spoke gently to everyone. Nobody screamed or yelled at anyone else. The sun was never allowed to set on anger. But this, this was something different, something nasty brought in by damn Tynan.

  Susie knew her sister might eventually forgive her for what she’d said. But when Tynan had done exactly what she’d known he would, Susie hadn’t felt any happiness that this horrible man was gone from Leila’s life. She’d felt only the loss of the sister who’d never come back to cry on her shoulder and say ‘I’m sorry, I know you wanted what was best for me.’

  That loneliness was the hardest thing to bear.

  Leila bit her lip and stared out of her office window at the Dublin skyline. Down below was buzzing with people already leaving offices for home. In the distance, it was still bright enough that she could see the Wicklow mountains, a faded purple blur where she and Tynan had once climbed the Sugar Loaf with some of his friends.

  She wouldn’t cry. All she’d been doing lately was crying, and she wasn’t going to start in the office just because Susie had made her feel guilty on purpose. It wasn’t her fault that her job was miles away from Waterford and that she couldn’t nip over to take care of Jack at a moment’s notice.

  She had a full-time job, a career. Susie had to understand that.

  Then she thought of her mother lying on a trolley in hospital, scared and in pain, and she had to bite her lip really hard. Susie was there for Mum and Mum was there for Susie and Jack.

  Leila wasn’t there for anybody any more. Tynan had managed to drive a wedge between her and her family, and Leila had been in too much pain to fix it. Now, she didn’t know how.