Stand by Me (27 page)
She couldn’t believe she’d been so naïve as to assume he was faithful to her. He was a wealthy, attractive man who had an apartment in Dublin. Why wouldn’t other women flock to him, lured by his money as much as his looks? How did she ever think that she’d be able to keep such a man to herself?
She didn’t want her marriage to break up. She still loved him. And the truth was that even if he was seeing Little Miss Valentine, there was no reason to think that it was anything other than a casual affair. Brendan was a very passionate man in bed. She’d done her best to be equally passionate for him, but maybe it hadn’t been enough. Perhaps those months when she hadn’t been able to make love to him, when she’d turned away from him, had hurt him more than she knew. Maybe he needed to prove to himself that he was the kind of man that women wanted to make love to.
She shouldn’t make excuses for him. He’d made vows to her and he hadn’t kept them, although she acknowledged to herself that there was nothing in the text that implied he’d done anything more than spend an evening with its sender. Nevertheless, the sentiment was clear. Perhaps, though, it was
her
sentiment, not his.
her
sentiment, not his.
She told herself she was clutching at straws. But she didn’t know what else she could cling to.
She waited for the axe to fall, for him to tell her about Miss Valentine. She noticed now that he was cagey about where he was going and what he was doing. It had never bothered her before. She’d simply thought that he was busy with his things and she was busy with hers. After all, particularly in the last year, she’d found plenty to do, with her committees and meetings. And although things were more low-key in Cork than in Dublin, there was still lots for her to be involved in. But she couldn’t concentrate for thinking of what he might be doing. It was driving her insane.
In the end she talked to Greg first.
He’d called over to Atlantic View to set up the new computer Brendan had bought for her as a birthday present. Neither she nor Brendan was very clued up about computers, but Brendan liked the idea of everything in Atlantic View being completely up to date. And he didn’t want her messing with his own computer and maybe deleting important files.
‘I wouldn’t,’ she said huffily, and he said better to be safe than sorry and bought her a computer for herself.
After Greg had finished installing the software, he came into the kitchen, where Dominique made him a cup of tea.
‘I hope you’ll have lots of happy hours playing Solitaire,’ he told her.
She looked at him edgily. ‘Why? You think I’ll be stuck here on my own?’
‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that most people spend hours playing Solitaire on their computers.’
‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess that’ll be me too, so.’
He knew there was something wrong. He always did. So he asked her and she, in return, told him about the text message and asked him if he’d known that Brendan was having an affair. If he’d been keeping quiet about it. She reminded him of the time he’d used the notion of Brendan having an affair as something that she’d be able to forgive, and reminded him, too, that he’d said it was just an example - had it been, she demanded, or had he known all along?
‘Of course I didn’t know,’ said Greg. ‘God Almighty, Domino, I would never have kept something like that from you.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘No.’
She was relieved at that. The idea of both Delahaye brothers keeping secrets from her was more than she could bear. A tear slid down her cheek.
‘Don’t cry.’ Greg tore a strip of kitchen towel from the roll and handed it to her. ‘I’m sure the two of you can work it out.’
‘You mean that I’ll forgive him?’
‘Oh, Domino.’ He took her into his arms and held her there while she cried. At last she pulled away and blew her nose in the piece of kitchen roll. ‘I’ve always worried about the possibility.’ She sniffed. ‘Especially since he’s become more successful. I’ve worried that there are women out there who admire him and want to be with him and be something for him that I can’t.’
Greg looked startled.
‘Too much information,’ Dominique said wryly. ‘Don’t worry, Greg. It’s not our sex life I’m talking about. It’s just that he doesn’t have to worry about any of them getting lost in a black fog and bursting into tears for no apparent reason.’
‘Do you?’
‘Not any more, obviously. But it’s always there in the back of his mind. I know it is.’
‘You’re wrong, Domino. He loves you and he cares for you and you have to stop thinking about a time in your life that’s done and dusted.’
‘I heard him on the phone once. Maybe he was talking to a woman then. He said he hadn’t signed up for it. That he’d had enough.’
‘He was talking to me,’ Greg corrected her. ‘I told him that everything would be all right. And it is. You know it is.’
‘So why is he having a damned affair?’
‘Maybe he’s not. Maybe you got it wrong.’
But she knew she hadn’t. What she still didn’t know was what the hell she was going to do about it.
Chapter 14
Kelly Delahaye ran down the steps of the local radio station. She pointed her zapper at the car, which was parked on the other side of the small car park, while at the same time answering her mobile phone and fixing the silver clip in her shining hair.
‘Oh, sure,’ she told her cousin Alicia, who had asked if Kelly would be joining their gang of friends at their favourite cheap and cheerful Italian that evening. ‘I have to do this charity thing with Mum first, so if I’m late, go ahead without me. It’s work experience. I’m going to try to interview some of her friends and then put together a piece about them.’ She laughed as Alicia told her to have fun. ‘Hardly fun,’ she said as she got into the car, the mobile jammed between her shoulder and her chin. ‘Most of Mum’s events bore me to death. All those silly chattering women trying to outdo each other. I don’t know how she puts up with it. She’s not a bit like them really.’
She snapped her phone closed and threw it on to the passenger seat beside her. Then she started the car engine and moved forward slowly.
Kelly’s car was a bright gold Micra that Brendan had bought her for her eighteenth birthday a couple of years earlier. Kelly had really wanted a motorbike (a Yamaha had been her bike of choice), but Brendan had put his foot down and told her in no uncertain terms that there wasn’t a hope in hell of her getting a lethal weapon like a bike, no matter how vehemently she promised to be safe.
‘It’s not just you I’m worried about,’ said Brendan. ‘It’s other road-users too.’
She’d been disappointed about the bike (and disappointed, too, that the birthday present car had turned out to be a granny motor rather than something chic and sporty), but there was no doubt that the Micra was handy for getting around and a cinch to park in the city’s overcrowded streets. It was, perhaps, a bit too easy to drive, but Kelly was hoping that if she managed to get as far as her upcoming twenty-first birthday without scratching it once, her father might rethink his position on something with a little more street cred.
She turned on to the main road that led towards Atlantic View. Kelly herself would have called the house something different - in her opinion, the name, though technically correct, was far too unimaginative. But then her father wasn’t an imaginative person. What creativity he had was solely reserved for his building projects.
She hadn’t been all that happy about moving to Cork at first. Leaving Dublin and her friends had been a terrible wrench, and none of her parents’ efforts to cheer her up had made it any easier. Not the
Xena: Warrior Princess
-decorated room with its very own TV and PlayStation, nor the frequent trips to the local McDonald’s (which Dominique had rationed very severely in Dublin) nor even the acquisition of a major new wardrobe had appeased her. It wasn’t until she started school and began to make new friends that she finally felt as though she was fitting in. And, of course, when she brought other girls home and they saw all her gadgets, they were only too happy to be friends with her too.
Xena: Warrior Princess
-decorated room with its very own TV and PlayStation, nor the frequent trips to the local McDonald’s (which Dominique had rationed very severely in Dublin) nor even the acquisition of a major new wardrobe had appeased her. It wasn’t until she started school and began to make new friends that she finally felt as though she was fitting in. And, of course, when she brought other girls home and they saw all her gadgets, they were only too happy to be friends with her too.
She made quite a lot of friends, but she was closest to her cousin Alicia, older than her by a few months. Dominique had always called Alicia a sweet girl, and Kelly knew what she meant. Her cousin was gentle and kind and acted as a brake on some of Kelly’s own madcap ideas. Kelly knew that Alicia was friends with her for her own sake too, unlike some of the girls in her class, who, she was sure, just wanted to nose around Atlantic View and play with her stuff. Alicia wasn’t the sort of girl who was into stuff. Anyhow, her parents - though not as well off as Kelly’s - were far more indulgent and generally bought her the newest of everything, so she had no reasons for envy.
Atlantic View was something to envy, thought Kelly, as she began the drive up the narrow, twisting road that led to the house. As far as she was concerned it was simply home, but there were times when she saw it featured in the glossy pages of style magazines and regarded it with a fresh perspective; those were the times when she realised that it was, as they always said, a very desirable property. She knew that was why so many women came to the charity events that Dominique hosted there. They all wanted to snoop around and say that they’d been invited to Dominique Delahaye’s. It was a badge of social honour to get inside Atlantic View and to meet her mother, who was variously referred to, in those same glossy magazines, as Wonder Wife, Golden Girl and Dazzling Domino.
As far as Kelly was concerned, Dominique was just Mum. Kelly loved her with a protective ferocity that sometimes surprised even herself. She knew that her mother’s life wasn’t really a dizzying whirl of designer dresses, cocktail parties and jet-set holidays, although it was certainly true that after they’d first moved to Cork, the profile of the Delahayes had rocketed as Delahaye Developments grew and diversified. It was equally true that Dominique could have spent six nights a week out on the town if she chose. There was a time when that was exactly what she’d done, going to dinners and balls and shows with Brendan almost every night. But after a while they’d cut back on their socialising as Brendan concentrated even more on his business, and Dominique only went to events that she considered particularly worthwhile. Kelly remembered her mother telling her that being invited to so many things was great at first and it was nice to be popular. But she also said that not everybody liked you for who you were, that sometimes it was because of
what
you were. She’d looked resigned when she’d said those words, and Kelly - who knew exactly what she meant, because of her popularity in school being so closely linked to living at Atlantic View - agreed with her. These days Dominique was even more selective in her involvement with the charity circuit and preferred lower-key projects like painting the local community hall or sponsoring new kit for school sports teams. (To be fair, Kelly acknowledged, it was her dad who sponsored the kit, but her mum was the one who turned up at the school and made a big fuss of all the kids.)
what
you were. She’d looked resigned when she’d said those words, and Kelly - who knew exactly what she meant, because of her popularity in school being so closely linked to living at Atlantic View - agreed with her. These days Dominique was even more selective in her involvement with the charity circuit and preferred lower-key projects like painting the local community hall or sponsoring new kit for school sports teams. (To be fair, Kelly acknowledged, it was her dad who sponsored the kit, but her mum was the one who turned up at the school and made a big fuss of all the kids.)
Dominique was a voluntary director of half a dozen charitable groups. She kept completely up to date with everything they were doing and was a stern critic of projects that didn’t meet certain criteria regarding fund-raising and outcomes, sometimes arguing vehemently with her fellow directors and demanding answers to searching questions. Kelly had been a little bit surprised to notice this harder edge develop in her mother, because until then she’d always thought that her dad was the tough businessperson in the family. But these days her mum was seen as successful too, even if, as her dad put it, she spent most of her time simply giving cash away, while he did his best to earn it.
It was tiring, she thought sometimes, to have parents who were seen as pillars of the community. It was a lot to live up to.
She circled past the catering vans parked in the driveway in front of the house and jumped out of the car. This afternoon’s garden party was in aid of the children’s hospital unit. Most of Dominique’s charity functions helped children in some way, and Kelly thought that maybe that was why they were so popular. People liked helping kids. It gave them a good feeling inside.
She glanced at her watch. It was four thirty, and the party was due to start shortly. But she still had plenty of time to change into something more suitable than the scruffy jeans and T-shirt she was wearing before mingling with the crowd and trying to get interviews for the radio station.
‘Hello, darling.’ Dominique smiled as Kelly clattered into the hallway. ‘Had a good day?’
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