She’d fought back the sudden rush of panic his
words had given her. Was he talking about a marriage proposal? After just three months together? She didn’t want to ask him outright in case he wasn’t thinking in that direction at all. She’d be mortified if she’d misunderstood him completely.
Lainey had been delighted at the idea. ‘Jaysus!’ she’d shrieked down the line from Australia. She might have lost her Irish accent since she and her family had emigrated fifteen years before, but not her vocabulary. ‘My friend the blushing bride! I can hear the wedding bells from here. I have to be bridesmaid. In pink taffeta. Promise me now, Evie.’
‘Lainey, stop it! I might have it all wrong. I probably have. It’s just he’s been really secretive. Hinting that he wants to ask me something.’
‘Oh, how romantic. But you can’t marry him yet anyway, you know that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I haven’t met him. And you can’t possibly marry someone I haven’t approved. Listen, forget New York, come to Melbourne instead. I’m off to Brisbane for two weeks in April for work -I can check him out and then the two of you can mind my apartment for me.’
Eva had just laughed at her. Lainey the steamroller. ‘No, thanks. It’s New York, New York or nothing, nothing.’
At the entrance to the wine bar she stopped and thought about it for a moment. Would Lainey
approve of Dermot if she met him? And more to the point, would she want Lainey to meet Dermot? After what had happened last time Lainey had met one of her boyfriends? She put the thought out of her head and went inside.
He was sitting at a corner table, talking on his new phone. It was the latest model, silver-plated. He was very proud of it. As she took off her coat and sat down opposite him, he waved a finger at her, pointing to the phone with his free hand while he continued talking. After a second she saw what he was pointing at - he’d had his name engraved on the silver plating. ‘Dermot Deegan’. Underneath it, in smaller letters, ‘Play to Win’. Eva’s heart sank. Motivational slogans were the latest trend in his property office.
‘Hi Eva,’ he greeted her, finally finishing his call. ‘What’ll you have, a G&T? A V&T?’
‘Gin would be great, thanks, Dermot.’ She watched as he went up to bar. He looked especially sleek tonight, she noticed. He was a very good looking man. Out of her league really. She didn’t normally attract men as successful and handsome as Dermot.
Beside her a small group of women were talking and giggling. They’d braved the weather in short dresses, showing plenty of skin, their heavy coats a jumble on a chair behind them. One of them had noticed Dermot and was whispering to her friend
about him. The friend whispered back, then they both turned and shot a glance at Eva.
Eva shifted in her seat under their scrutiny, feeling a little dowdy compared to them. Dermot had tried to glam her up on a few occasions, before realising short glittery dresses and tight-fitting, low-cut tops weren’t her style. She preferred simple clothes, coloured Tshirts, little jackets, long skirts and jeans. She glanced down at her clothes now - the white linen shirt and black skirt that Ambrose liked to see her in behind the counter. Definitely not the pop princess look Dermot favoured. Quite ordinary clothes, really.
That word again.
Looking around the wine bar, Eva surreptitiously opened the top button on her shirt, hoping that would spice up her look. Oh yes, instant glamour. Not. She was just contemplating opening another button and thrilling the winebar with her Marks and Spencer bra when Dermot came up behind her.
‘One gin and tonic,’ he said in a loud voice, putting a fresh drink in his place as well. ‘So, how was your day?’
She had just started to tell him about Meg settling in so well when he broke in over her. ‘Big things afoot in our place, Eva. Charlie in Commercial Property has resigned and you know what that means.’
She didn’t have a clue. She didn’t even know who Charlie was. Her blank look said as much.
‘A reshuffle. There are places opening upstairs in the next few months and we are all officially Under Scrutiny.’
She knew he was worked up when he started Speaking In Capitals.
‘Is that good?’
‘It could be huge, babe.’
She tried to ignore the Americanism.
He shifted in his seat and gave her an unusual look. She had the same feeling she’d had with Ambrose several nights before. What was this National Drop a Bombshell Week?
‘Now, Eva, you might have wondered why I suggested we meet for a drink tonight. I mean, it’s not our normal night to meet up, but well, with the situation changing so rapidly at the office, I realised that I had to keep things moving along. I decided there was no point waiting until we were in New York to ask you what I wanted to ask you.’
Eva went stiff. Oh my God, she thought. Was this the proposal? She wasn’t ready for it. A sudden image sprang into her mind. Lainey standing beside her, dressed in a pink taffeta bridesmaid dress.
Dermot seemed uncharacteristically unsure of himself. He adjusted his tie, gave a little cough, even cast a glance at the mirror behind her to make sure he looked the part. There was another short pause while he took a sip of his pint, then he leaned in close toward her. ‘You see, Eva, I’ve heard a few
whispers that your uncle might be thinking about retiring.’ Eva’s head shot up. How did he know that? Had he bugged her? Her thoughts raced. Surely Ambrose hadn’t spoken to Dermot about this already? But no, of course he wouldn’t have. In any case, what would Ambrose’s retirement have to do with them getting married? Did Dermot want to work in the shop with her, after their wedding? She couldn’t imagine that. She decided to say nothing, hoping she hadn’t given anything away. ‘As you know, Eva, property prices in this part of Dublin, Camden Street in particular, have been rising substantially in the past few years. Above all expectations, in fact. And all the signs are that the economy will continue to boom.’ Eva couldn’t believe her ears. He was prefacing his marriage proposal with an economics lecture? In her mind’s eye, Lainey-in-pink-taffeta started to make loud snoring noises. ‘It’s those indicators that have brought me to the point of our meeting here tonight.’ Eva was transfixed. This was his marriage proposal? And if she said yes, was this really the sort of romantic story she would relish telling her children and grandchildren about in the years to come? Well, the way it happened was Dermot rang me up unexpectedly at work a week before we were due to go on holiday to New York, which was where I’d thought
he was going to propose. And we met in a fashionable new bar and first he gave me a very fascinating lecture about rising property values in Dublin and then he said to me ‘Eva, would you ask your uncle if I can handle the sale of his shop?’ Dermot’s voice rang out loud and clear through the wine bar noise.
Eva sat very, very still. Lainey-in-pink-taffeta disappeared with a pop. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Dermot pasted a rehearsed engaging smile onto his face and leaned closer toward her. ‘Evie ‘
‘Eva. Ev-a,’ she said, her voice dangerously low. Only a few special people were allowed to call her Evie.
‘Ev-a.’ That smile again. ‘Ambrose is due to retire, surely? What is he, sixty-five? Seventy? I mean, I’ve been keeping an eye on him for months now, before you and I, uhm, got together, and I’ve thought he’s got to be thinking about retiring soon, and selling up. I mean, now is the right time, property prices are so high along Camden Street. Ambrose needs to seize the day.’ He thumped his fist on the table with such force that their drinks and his mobile phone jumped.
Eva watched in a strangely detached way as her gin and tonic rippled then settled in its glass. She felt as though nine or ten layers of gauze had just been ripped, forcibly, from in front of her eyes. She spoke carefully, the words slowly forming themselves in her
head. ‘So is that what all of this has been about, Dermot?’
‘What?’
‘You calling into the shop. Talking to Ambrose. Paying me attention. Asking me out. The trip to New York? You’ve been going out with me to get to my uncle, haven’t you? To try and get the commission on the sale of my uncle’s shop?’
Dermot was immediately defensive. ‘Of course that wasn’t all it was. You’re a nice-looking woman, Eva. Uhm, lovely smile. I’m sure plenty of your customers ask you out —’
Nice-looking? Nice-looking. Nuns were nice looking. It was her turn to talk over him. ‘How could I have been so stupid? This wasn’t about me at all, was it? You weren’t going out with me, Eva Kennedy. You were going out with Ambrose Kennedy’s niece, whoever or whatever she happened to be, weren’t you?’
She stopped short, feeling sick to her stomach. He wasn’t denying a thing. Not any of it. He was just looking at her as though he was glad it was all out in the open and, now that it was, could she please ask her uncle if he could handle the sale? All sorts of things fell into place. Why he hadn’t seemed interested in her - in her mind, her thoughts, her body. Why he’d allocated her specific times. She’d been just a project to him. Then she had another awful thought.
‘Are you married, Dermot?’
‘No!’ he said quickly. But she noticed he seemed uncomfortable.
She knew without doubt that there was someone else. She stared at him in complete amazement. In a kind of wonder, even. ‘How long did you expect it to take, Dermot? What was supposed to happen? That I’d be so flattered by your attention I’d get Ambrose to roll over and agree too?’
He said nothing. Again, there was no shame on his face. Just expectation.
Her temper rose like a geyser. ‘You bastard, Dermot. You two-faced, deceitful bastard.’
The diners at the surrounding tables spun around at the sound of that. Eva noticed but didn’t care. Let them listen. Let them hear what a creep Dermot had turned out to be. She stared at him, eyes blazing.
To her astonishment, Dermot rounded on her instead. ‘Well, it hasn’t exactly been a day at the beach going out with you either, do you know that?’
The other diners were making no bones about eavesdropping now. One of them turned his chair around for a better view.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, look at yourself. At least I’m actually doing something with my life, making something of myself. Not like you. You’re just drifting along, not making anything happen. Three years at art school, but what have you done with it? Nothing. You talk about the
singing you used to do, how you’re an artist at heart, but I’ve known you for three months and you haven’t so much as lifted a paintbrush or sung a note. Face facts, Eva, you’re not creative. You’re just…’
The whole wine bar waited.
‘A shop assistant,’ he finished.
Eva felt as though she was outside of herself watching all this happen. As though she was in a play or an opera. She half expected the diners behind her to burst into song.
A shop assistant! A shop assistant! He says she’s just [Gasp] A shop assistant!
Eva could hardly find her breath. How dare he? How dare he talk to her like that? Hands trembling, heart thumping, she summoned every scrap of pride, stood and picked up her bag. There was nothing else to say. Feeling like a robot, she climbed the steps to the front door, opened it and started walking as quickly as she could.
Then, just a few steps along the footpath, she realised she did have something else to say. So she turned around and came back.
The other customers shifted expectantly in their seats. ‘Excellent,’ one of them said to her friend. ‘Round two.’ They settled back to listen.
Eva walked up to Dermot’s table and stood right in front of him. She could feel her cheeks burning in anger and embarrassment. This time he had the grace to look uncomfortable.
‘One last thing, Dermot. You can forget about the shop. My uncle isn’t selling it.’ Because he wants to give it to me, she was about to add.
But Dermot interrupted her. ‘Oh well,’ he shrugged. ‘There’ll be others.’
Somehow that hurt more than anything he’d said before. Standing looking at him, she thought of his deceit, his imagey ways, his American slang. All the things that had annoyed her rushed at her memory.
At that moment his mobile phone started to ring, playing a very loud tune. The sound reminded her of one of his particularly annoying habits. Moving quickly, she picked up the ringing phone, silver-plating and all, and upended it into his pint glass. The dark liquid gurgled and slopped around it.
‘No, Dermot, don’t tell me. Let me guess the brand by the sound it makes.’ She waited a beat as they both watched the phone glug to the bottom of the glass. ‘Ah yes, now I have it,’ she said clearly. ‘It’s a Guinness.’
With that, she walked out again. And this time she didn’t come back.
At THAT same moment in London, Joseph was driving around the block in his black Fiat for the fourth time, trying to find a parking space within walking distance of his apartment.
When he’d first moved into Shoreditch three years ago it hadn’t been so bad. But in the past year every single warehouse seemed to have turned into a bar or a restaurant or an apartment block. Each of them was filled with people every night, taking up every available parking space for miles around. London was getting impossible to live in. Impossible to drive around, anyway. He could go back to the Tube, of course. Then he thought about it. No, he couldn’t. He’d had enough of crowded carriages, delayed trains and broken escalators as a student.
He finally found a park three streets away from his house. Soon he’d need to carry a moped in the boot of the car, to get from where he parked to his house.
He walked into the apartment, flicking through his mail. The answering machine was flashing. Two messages. He pressed the button as he went past. The first message was from his mother, her voice soft on the tape. ‘Hello Joseph, I hope this thing is working. Just a quick call to say I’ve booked that Italian restaurant in Kentish Town for dinner on Friday at seven o’clock. That should give us plenty of time to get you out to Heathrow. I’m looking forward to seeing you, take care of yourself till then.’ The second was a marketing company wanting to sell him some double-glazing. He was looking forward to seeing his mother, too, and he liked that restaurant a lot. As for the other message, he already had double-glazing. He pressed the button on the side of the machine, erasing both messages. The phone started to ring just as he was heading into the kitchen. He answered. ‘Joseph, you have to come and have a pint with me. Lou said it’s the only thing that will save our marriage. It’s on your head.’ Joseph laughed. ‘George, how are you?’ ‘I’m fine, it’s Lou I’m worried about. I don’t know if it’s twins she’s having or wolf cubs.’ Joseph could hear Lou protesting in the background as George kept talking. ‘She says she can’t bear to be in the same house as me tonight, that I’m out of control and only you calm me down, make me