Stand by Me (62 page)
‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ said Dominique.
‘Is he going to sponge off you?’
‘You don’t know Brendan,’ said Dominique. ‘He’s resourceful and determined and he’ll find a way to make money. It’s what he does.’
Maeve looked at her doubtfully.
‘He also left you,’ she reminded her. ‘He walked out without a word. You had to sell everything.’
‘He made a mistake. We all make mistakes.’
‘Not monumental ones like that. What is it about him that keeps you so loyal?’
‘I’m not that loyal,’ said Dominique. ‘But he stood by me when I needed it. And however I feel about what he’s done, he needs me to stand by him right now.’
‘Just don’t lose everything all over again,’ begged Maeve.
‘I don’t have anything to lose,’ Dominique told her.
‘Yes you do,’ said Maeve. ‘And you know it.’
Dominique drove back to Fairview more slowly than usual. She was thinking about Maeve’s words and her friend’s attitude. Maeve hardly knew Brendan, and she was basing everything on his abrupt departure as well as what she had read in the papers. Nothing in the papers gave a true picture of Brendan. Nobody who wrote about him really knew him. Dominique was utterly certain that one day he would make back what he had lost. Not straight away. But eventually. And then they would be back to where they were before.
She couldn’t understand what it was that Maeve thought she had now that was worth hanging on to. A life where she worked long hours for a very modest salary and barely scraped by. A house that would fit into the kitchen of Atlantic View. A social life that was dull and boring, even with the occasional night out with Paddy O’Brien. Who she’d certainly have to lose if she and Brendan stayed together. Her husband wouldn’t understand her being just good friends with another man. She wasn’t entirely sure that he believed she and Greg hadn’t once had something between them.
She leaned back in the driver’s seat as heavy traffic forced her to a stop. In some ways, having Brendan around made her feel secure. But until the court case was out of the way, she didn’t know how to plan for the future. Whatever happened, though, she was sticking with him till then. She’d made a promise to Lily and Maurice and the rest of the Delahayes. None of them would leave Brendan to face things on his own.
Afterwards, though . . .
She had no idea about afterwards.
It was still hard enough to deal with now.
Chapter 33
Brendan’s High Court appearance was scheduled for the following month. During that time he worked hard with Ciara to come up with possible settlements so that his time in court would be as brief as possible. Although most of his investments in Panama had tumbled, liquidating others would repay the majority of the money he owed to his investors, and further money had finally been freed up from his overseas bank accounts. Delahaye Developments, having been placed in administration, couldn’t be saved, and although Ciara had suggested that the directors (Barry, Matthew and Brendan) might be prosecuted for reckless trading, she thought it was unlikely. She also planned to argue that since the property market had taken a downturn since the investors had given Brendan money, it was unreasonable for them to expect that they would get it all back anyway. She and Brendan were cautiously optimistic that if they got most of it back they would be if not happy, at least a little less angry. And although the money hadn’t been in the original account that had been opened in the name of the Barbados scheme, Ciara had successfully argued that Brendan had many overseas projects and that just because specific funds hadn’t been paid into this account didn’t mean there was a sinister reason for it being empty.
During that time he went through everything in detail with Dominique, explaining the various options with her so that she fully understood what was going on. He was surprised at the depth of the questions she asked him and her grasp of the situation. He found that he was enjoying sitting with her in the evenings, looking at the legal papers and discussing them over a glass of wine. Not since the days before Kelly was born, when Dominique had taken care of the company’s accounts, had he spent so much time with her.
‘Maybe I should have kept you on as my accountant after all,’ he said one night as she queried one of the figures on the spreadsheet in front of her.
‘Maybe you should,’ she responded. ‘After all, none of my charity events ever lost money.’
‘It’ll be different from now on,’ promised Brendan. ‘Over this past year I’ve realised what the most important things in my life are.’
‘So have I,’ said Dominique.
‘I hope I’m part of them.’ He put his arm around her. She allowed him to leave it there, but when he pulled her closer and kissed her, she broke away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I’m not ready for this. Not yet. I need everything to be sorted before I can . . . before ...’
He nodded. ‘I understand. I do, really.’ He put his arm around her again, more casually this time, and that was how Kelly (who was now back at college in Cork but had come to Dublin for a few days) found them when she arrived home after a visit to her grandparents.
‘Did you have a nice time, sweetheart?’ Brendan looked up at her.
‘Yes thanks. Gran and Grandad hope you’re both OK.’
‘Did you tell Gran I’d call over during the week?’ asked Dominique.
‘Of course.’ Kelly nodded.
‘Are you coming to stay here next weekend?’ Brendan looked at his daughter hopefully, but Kelly shook her head. She was going to a concert with Alicia, she told him. The next time she’d be in Dublin would be for the court case.
‘Ciara is very optimistic,’ said Brendan on the morning of the hearing. He’d come downstairs dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, deep purple tie and plain blue shirt. ‘I hope it all works out as she expects. When it comes to money, people can be very unreasonable.’
‘And you blame them for that?’ Dominique was wearing black – a simple shift dress with a buckled belt that emphasised the fact that she’d lost even more weight in the last few days. She slipped into her five-year-old black Balenciaga shoes.
‘I understand how they feel,’ said Brendan penitently. ‘But we’ll come through this, Domino. As dazzling as ever.’
She looked at her pale face in the mirror. She certainly wasn’t Dazzling Domino today. She was Drab Domino. She hadn’t intended to be, but her nerves were etched in the worry lines on her face, and no amount of make-up could make her look anything other than wan and terrified. She stared at her reflection and opened her make-up bag again. She might not be dazzling, she muttered under her breath, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to be drab.
Kelly followed Brendan down the stairs. Her youth and beauty made up for the fact that she too was pale. She was wearing a Topshop dress in shades of green and gold that complemented her Celtic skin and strawberry-blond hair, and a pair of lime-green high-heeled shoes she’d bought in Marks & Spencer.
‘Well,’ said Brendan as the three of them stood in the hallway. ‘We’re ready to take them on. Delahayes United.’ He put his arms around them and hugged them close. ‘You’re the most important people in the world to me,’ he said.
Neither Dominique nor Kelly said anything in reply.
Gabriel, who’d decided to stay in Ireland until Brendan’s High Court appearance, had offered to drive them to the hearing. Dominique was happy to let him - she couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a taxi in uncomfortable silence. Not that she expected much talk with Gabriel either today, but at least he was family too.
He arrived exactly on time and they got into the car. It was Seamus’s car, his ten-year-old silver Ford Focus, which he maintained lovingly. Dominique hoped that some aggrieved investor didn’t jump out and hit it with a hurley or a baseball bat.
There was a group of photographers waiting for them outside the big, imposing building by the Liffey. Dominique glanced up at its enormous dome as she hurried up the steps holding Brendan’s hand. Kelly was on his other side, also holding his hand.
‘Are you sticking by him, Domino?’ cried one of the reporters.
‘Are you ashamed, Mr Delahaye?’ asked another.
‘Where did you get your shoes, Kelly?’ demanded a third.
There was a flurry of flashbulb lights and then they were inside the round hall of the building, their footsteps echoing on the tiled floor.
The courtroom was smaller than she’d expected, and the judge reminded Dominique of Judge Judy, a programme she’d watched some afternoons in the days after Brendan’s disappearance, when she hadn’t had the energy to do anything else. But this woman didn’t speak in Judge Judy’s impatient American voice. She was quiet and determined and she listened courteously to the application that was being made by Brendan’s creditors as well as the arguments from his own counsel.
Dominique listened to the arguments but she couldn’t entirely follow them. She knew that Brendan’s admission of guilt - insofar as he’d disappeared and allowed his company to fail and hadn’t given any information to his investors - had earned him a slightly more sympathetic hearing from the judge. But she also knew that just because he was sorry about it, didn’t mean that everything was going to be all right.
I never imagined, she thought as she gazed up at the high ceiling and allowed the drone of the legal arguments to pass over her, that this was how things would end up. The first day I saw Brendan Delahaye I thought he was a good-looking, man. And when I went out with him I thought he was decent and hard-working. I didn’t think about marrying him then, even though I was probably in love with him. It was the pregnancy that brought it all to a head. But if I hadn’t got pregnant, if I hadn’t got married . . . where would I be now? Happily married to someone else? A career woman? Divorced? It was all so random, she thought. So unpredictable. You did your best, but sometimes the worst happened and you didn’t know why.
She glanced at Brendan, who was looking straight ahead of him. He’s not as bad as they’re trying to make out, she told herself. He truly isn’t. He got caught up in trying to be better than anyone else, in trying to live up to their expectations. And maybe he got caught up in trying to make more money than we ever needed to make. It’s all very well for people to say that money doesn’t bring happiness, but for a time it probably does. And maybe that always comes at a price.
A shaft of sunlight cut through the courtroom. She thought suddenly of Glenmallon and the fact that today there was a big corporate event on. She’d done a lot of work on the organisation (most of that fell to her these days because she was so good at it) and had been scheduled to be at the club today, but she’d switched with Sorcha. Sorcha had wished her the best of luck in court and said that she was a great woman standing by her man.
Dominique hadn’t thought about it like that. She wasn’t standing by Brendan for herself. She was doing it for all of the Delahayes, who’d been so good to her. Well, she was doing it for Lily and Maurice, certainly. And in a way for Barry and June too. She still wasn’t entirely speaking to June, who, she felt, had been horrible at every available opportunity. But she knew that her sister-in-law wasn’t good with stress and she knew that stress could make you act in ways you’d later regret. After the collapse of Delahaye Developments, Barry had been barred from ever being a director of another public company, which had upset June deeply. However, the two of them had somehow managed to get over all their anger and grief and rage and just about everything else and were no longer talking about separating or divorce or even selling their beautiful house. June - as Dominique had always known - had substantial savings of her own, which she’d accumulated over the years that Barry had worked with Brendan. She hadn’t really intended this money to be used for anything other than her own special treats, but the financial shock that had hit them after the company folded had meant that eventually she’d come clean to Barry about the size of her slush fund and they’d used it to pay off the accumulating bills. And then, despite all their gloomy predictions, Barry had got a job in the office of a local factory and was doing very well there. So for June and Barry at least, things were looking up.
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