It Started With Paris Page 3

  Eamonn Devlin looked up as Leila burst into his office.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, instantly interpreting the expression on her face.

  ‘My mother’s had a car accident. I have to go home right now. I know I’m leaving you in the lurch with the Octagon Rising movie people coming into town—’

  Devlin held up one big tanned hand. A week’s skiing in France had made him look more piratical than ever. His dark skin, combined with coal-black hair and eyes, had made Leila wonder the first day she’d met him if he’d be able to carry off hoop earrings and a parrot on one shoulder. He was tall, well built in a rugby player sort of way, and devastatingly handsome – and he knew it, using it to great effect with visiting talent.

  More than one actress had wanted to succumb to Devlin’s charm, but Leila was pretty sure he was too canny to actually have a fling with an actress. That way madness lay – and probably a one-way ticket to the Antarctic office. If Eclipse had an Antarctic office.

  Right now, he studied Leila carefully through the long dark lashes on those black eyes. She often wondered if he could see through her carefully constructed persona to the person underneath, the woman cowering behind the carapace of professionalism, the woman on the verge of crying at her desk every day. But no, how could he? She was a good actress.

  ‘No worries, Leila,’ he said calmly. ‘You go. Ilona can take over for a couple of days, can’t she?’

  Leila nodded. Ilona was clever and dedicated. She’d love the chance to run things in her boss’s absence.

  ‘I can brief her, but really, she’s good to go on her own,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to fight to keep her, you know. She’ll want to progress in the industry.’

  ‘She’s not you, Leila,’ Devlin said brusquely. ‘Update me with how long you’ll be away, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Leila saluted, swivelled on her heel and walked out.

  Eamonn Devlin watched as she left, expensive suit jacket and trousers finished off to perfection by the even more expensive heels. He often wondered how she walked mile after mile in those damn platform things. It was a short woman thing, he decided. Determination that no boss would tower over her.

  Did she know that she was the one he’d do anything to keep? Probably not.

  He caught one last glimpse of her blonde hair falling in a curtain down her back before the door closed, hiding her from sight. Apparently she had it blow-dried professionally several times a week. Or so he’d read in a magazine profile. One of those ‘how I manage to do what I do’ articles, where she’d sounded lively, fun and wildly efficient, professing to love clever black ensembles and spicing up her clothes with big architectural jewellery. Perfect nails and hair completed the package, along with her BlackBerry and all the latest technology in her big career-woman bag. All in all, it came across as a carefully crafted lie to cover up the real person, the sort of construct only a rather brilliant publicist could pull off.

  The piece, which had been written before her husband left, was accompanied by a photo of her in trendy designer clothes, sitting on a beige velvet couch in a hotel, wedding and engagement ring prominently displayed. With the gorgeous hair and clothes, she’d looked the part, but neither the articles nor the photo captured who Leila really was: funny, kind, brilliant at what she did, so lovely to that sweet Hungarian girl she was mentoring.

  Few people could smile as warmly as Leila. Her face lit up and those rounded hazel eyes shone with happiness or humour. Since that bastard of a husband had left her, though, there hadn’t been much smiling.

  She was in serious pain, even though she thought she was hiding it. He wished he could do something, but she wouldn’t accept help. Any help. Especially not his. He was the boss; it wouldn’t be right.

  Devlin turned his head back to the figures on his computer. Women: impossible. There was nothing more to be said.

  On a small housing estate in Waterford, five hours later than planned, Susie finally parked with an excitable Pixie in the front, clambering down to the footwell and back up on to the seat, a routine she’d kept up since Susie had put her in the car.

  ‘Stop!’ Susie begged. It wasn’t that she didn’t like dogs, but she felt so close to the edge already, and having to babysit Pixie, who didn’t appear to understand either the word ‘no’ or the concept of doing her business outside, was really the final straw.

  Somehow she clipped the dog’s lead back on and led her up Mollsie’s neat front path with its perfect grass verge and nicely trimmed shrubs lining the way.

  She’d barely got to the door before Mollsie opened it.

  Mollsie was everyone’s idea of what the perfect childminder should look like: neat and tidy as her garden, her face an oval of warmth and eyes that missed nothing but shone with kindness. Nobody ever noticed what Mollsie wore or how her curly grey hair was styled. Such things were secondary to the sweetness of her personality.

  ‘You sure you don’t mind the dog?’ said Susie, almost sinking against the door with exhaustion.

  ‘I love dogs,’ Mollsie said, reaching out to rub Pixie’s ears. ‘Jack will be thrilled to see you, won’t he?’ she said to the dog, who instantly fell, like everybody else, under Mollsie’s spell and threw herself with delight against her new friend’s legs.

  ‘Come on in and have some supper. You must be worn out.’

  ‘No,’ said Susie. ‘I don’t want to intrude. I thought if Pixie went into the garden she might pee or something …’

  ‘Great plan. Now, you have to eat. I have chicken pie heating and some mash with cream. I know it’s not the diet food you like,’ Mollsie added, leading the way, ‘but you need nourishment after the day you’ve had. Tell me everything.’

  ‘Mum!’ Jack launched himself out of the kitchen at his mother. Then he stopped. ‘Pixie!’

  ‘We’re going to be minding her while Granny’s in hospital,’ Susie said tiredly.

  ‘Amazing!’ said Jack, on his knees and receiving a thorough Pixie face-wash.

  At least someone would be happy to have the dog in their apartment, Susie thought, though how she’d manage during the day was another story.

  ‘What sort of a dog is she?’ asked Mollsie fondly.

  ‘Spaniel, a bit of something else … wildly disobedient … Is there a name for a dog like that?’

  ‘Normal,’ pronounced Mollsie.

  Susie relaxed as Mollsie ushered them all back into the kitchen, let the dog out for an exploratory sniff of the garden and began to heat food for Susie, all the time keeping up a stream of idle chit-chat about how broken hips were much easier to sort out now and her mother would be back on her feet in no time.

  Jack snuggled up beside Susie as she sat on the couch.

  He was a beautiful child, everyone said so: with Susie’s fair hair, but almond-shaped brown eyes and olive skin that made him look like a creature from a fairy tale. He was a good kid too, but despite Mollsie’s best efforts, he’d got stressed because his mother was late. Susie did her best never to be late. She was determined that, though Jack might lack a father, he wouldn’t miss out on anything else. Jack ate the best of everything and had much more expensive clothes than anything Susie wore.

  ‘He tells me everything, you know,’ Mollsie laughingly told Susie early on. ‘Some people are astonished by that, but with kids, it all comes out. Arguments, crisps for dinner, you name it.’

  ‘No crisps for dinner or arguments in our house,’ Susie grinned. ‘Except when Jack won’t eat his vegetables.’

  Mollsie pretended surprise. ‘He tells me he eats vegetables all the time at home and that’s why he doesn’t have to eat so many here.’

  Jack giggled. ‘I hate green things.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said his mother, smiling.

  Susie rarely even had a cup of tea at Mollsie’s, aware that the older woman tried to look after both the children in her care and their parents. But tonight, the thought of chicken pie and someone to cook it for her was too much.

&nbs
p; As Susie ate, even Pixie calmed down after killing a sock and lay quietly on the couch.

  ‘There’s holes in it now,’ Jack said, holding the sock up gingerly as Pixie admired her handiwork proudly.

  ‘There were holes in it before,’ Mollsie said, ‘so it’s fine.’

  Finally Susie rounded up her son and the dog and said goodbye.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.

  Jack hugged Mollsie.

  ‘I can take care of him for you at the weekend when you’re visiting your mother,’ Mollsie said. ‘And Pixie can come too. Not when I’ve other children, I’m afraid, but she’s safe with Jack, isn’t she?’

  ‘Safe with Jack, yes. She loves him. Unsafe with socks and shoes,’ Susie said ruefully, already wondering how long it would take her to Pixie-proof the apartment. ‘Thank you, Mollsie.’

  As they drove off, Mollsie stood at the door watching the car. She’d taken care of many children over the years, and there were always a few parents who wriggled their way into her heart. Susie was one of those. She had an air about her of someone who’d been let down and was so determined that it wasn’t going to happen again that she would never let the circumstances arise.

  But, Mollsie thought as she closed her door against the winter night, everyone needed help. No woman was an island.

  Two

  Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction. ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

  Headmistress Grace Rhattigan liked being the last person to leave Bridgeport National School in the evening. It was a peaceful time to catch up on her endless paperwork, when the last teacher had vacated the staffroom and all the children – from the tiny ones to the sixth class, who considered themselves very grown-up indeed at age twelve – had gone.

  The cleaners had usually finished up by half four, although they’d been later leaving today as an explosion of yellow paint in senior infants had taken some time to eradicate.

  ‘It really is everywhere, Roberto,’ Grace had said to the head cleaner earlier as they both surveyed the corner of the classroom where an innocuous plastic bottle of paint – non-toxic – had been shaken and splashed joyfully at the walls by a five-year-old called Jamie.

  ‘No problem, Mrs Rhattigan,’ said Roberto. ‘We will clean so no yellow can be seen. Kids, they do these things.’ He smiled to show that it was no trouble at all and only to be expected.

  Grace was so fond of Roberto: he worked two jobs, she knew, to keep his large Brazilian family, and yet he was unfailingly obliging and greeted all events with a smile.

  If only everyone in the school was the same.

  ‘Look at this mess! Jamie said he wanted his sunflower to be on the wall instead of on paper,’ Miss Brown, the senior infants teacher, had said crossly earlier when she’d shown the headmistress Jamie’s rather larger than intended flower.

  ‘He certainly thinks big,’ Grace replied, gazing at the corner where yellow paint covered a sweep of window, a decent amount of the adjoining wall and every crevice of a shelf of books and jigsaws. ‘Maybe he’s going to be a famous artist, known for giant canvases.’

  Grace was always full of hope for the children in her care. They were all precious beings, with great talents and lovely characteristics, provided they were nurtured the right way.

  ‘Or he might be starting graffiti early,’ added Miss Brown, sounding knowing.

  Orla Brown was one of the youngest teachers in the school and she could do with a lesson in childcare from Roberto, Grace couldn’t help thinking. This was her first year as a teacher and she was still on probation. In her interviews with Grace and the school board, she’d been the epitome of the smiley senior infants teacher in her floaty pink skirt and flowery blouse. In reality, she had a hard streak that Grace was growing to dislike intensely.

  Grace drew herself up to her full five foot seven, and put on the sternly cool headmistress voice she found worked marvellously on certain people.

  ‘Orla, let’s set our sights higher than that,’ she admonished. ‘If we tell Jamie he’s going to be spray-painting walls down by the train station in the future, that’s as far as he’ll aim. There are plenty in his family who’d expect no more for him, but we won’t be doing that here. No.’ She surveyed the yellowness. ‘He’s an artist in the making. We have a huge responsibility for the children here, Orla. We must aim high for them, particularly when nobody at home will be. Do you understand?’

  It was not a question – it was a command.

  Chastened, Orla had said yes, she understood, but Grace wasn’t so sure.

  There were people who had a gift for education and there were those who didn’t. If a teacher believed a five-year-old boy was en route to a lifetime of nothing more than spray-painting rude words on walls, then that teacher had no place in Bridgeport National School.

  As soon as she returned to her office, Grace found her big desk notebook, the one she kept under lock and key, and reluctantly added a note to Orla Brown’s file.

  When she herself had been a junior infants teacher, over twenty-seven years ago, Grace could recall looking at each one of those little faces as if they were the country’s hope for the future. Happy and fulfilled adults, the best mothers and fathers ever, good-hearted people, even captains of industry and enthusiastic entrepreneurs. She’d seen it all in them, and she still did. People who thought differently did not make the best teachers.

  Sitting at her desk, with no noise apart from the ticking of the large clock on the wall, Grace’s thoughts ran to the framed childish sunflowers halfway up her own stairs.

  Sunflowers were senior infants; twinkling stars and happy Santa Clauses made with cotton wool were from first class; and penguins and butterflies adorned with dropping sparkles were second class. As a teacher, she’d been well aware how the various pieces of artwork and stories that Michael and Fiona brought home would mount up over the years, but it hadn’t stopped her from keeping them all.

  On the walls of the stairs and landing she had a gallery of their most precious pictures, from two sets of splodgy sunflowers to Fiona’s beautifully realised watercolour of the hills surrounding Bridgeport when she was in senior school and taking art for her final state exams.

  ‘Ma,’ Michael used to beg occasionally, ‘take them down. They’re embarrassing.’

  ‘Oh no, they’re not embarrassing, I promise you.’

  ‘No, Ma, really,’ he pleaded. It was hard for a grown man who could bench-press decent weights in the gym to have his sparkly Santa Claus displayed on the stairs. What would people think? Luckily, the person whose opinion most mattered to him thought they were adorable.

  ‘You love them,’ Fiona would tease her older brother, ‘because Katy loves them too. She’s always cooing over your finger-painting and sighing about how cute you were.’

  Michael was twenty-nine now, an engineer who lectured at the nearby Institute of Technology. Proud as she was of his academic successes, Grace was even prouder of the fact that he’d grown into a good man. Despite his burly frame, there was a deep loveliness to her son, a gentleness belied by his size.

  As she tidied up the last of her papers, Grace glanced towards the phone. She’d been waiting all day for a call from her son. She wondered whether she could have been mistaken about Michael and Katy getting engaged during their trip to Paris. Michael hadn’t actually said anything, but Grace wasn’t a school principal with a degree in child psychology for nothing. Usually she could read her son like a book – which wasn’t too difficult, given his inability to keep things from her. Several times over the past few weeks he’d blurted out questions about her and Stephen and their marriage.

  ‘What age were you when you and Dad got married?’ he’d asked during one visit, his face telling her that he regretted the words as soon as he’d said them.

  Pretending innocence, Grace had replied: ‘Twenty-three, but it was different then, darling. Not like today, when people live together and know each other’s foibles. Back i
n prehistoric times, we were babies at twenty-three, all fresh and shiny from school or college and knowing nothing. It’s better the way your generation do things – live together and discover if you’re suited before committing to marriage, like you and Katy.’

  Michael and Katy had lived together since college. They had a two-bedroom townhouse on the Bridgeport side of Waterford, and Katy commuted daily to Bridgeport Woollen Mills, where she worked in the marketing department. She’d done a business degree to help her understand, and eventually take over, her father’s business, but there was nothing in her of the spoilt only child.

  ‘Talking of Katy, are you two coming for dinner on Sunday?’ Grace had asked her son innocently, as if she’d made no connection between the questions about marriage and the girl he’d been dating since they were teenagers.

  It was lovely to know that neither Michael nor Fiona was scared of marriage, put off it for life by their parents’ divorce. She and Stephen had worked hard to ensure that they weren’t affected. Being civil when it felt as if there were no civil words in the world; smiling when the children passed from one parent to the other; talking to each other as calmly as if they were discussing a blocked drain instead of a family being split up.

  For years afterwards, Grace had wondered whether the break-up had been her fault. If she’d only been a more compliant sort of woman. If she’d been able to compromise, leave her teaching job in Bridgeport and move to Dublin, where Stephen would have had his pick of fabulous ad agency positions … but then Stephen hadn’t been one for compromise either. They’d clashed – both of them young, full of dreams and plans. Grace had argued that neither career was more important than stability for the children, and that meant remaining in Bridgeport.

  Somehow, amidst all the arguments, they’d come up with the idea of a trial separation. A crazy idea that seemed to grow on them.

  Grace had hoped it would make him realise what he was leaving behind. He’d miss being at home; he’d come round to her way of seeing things.