Once in a Lifetime

Money wasn’t the issue. She got a good salary; without a penny of David’s money, they’d have been able to live comfortably. Ingrid had no desire for massive wealth. Lord only knew, most of the people with vast sums of money seemed to have doubled their problems with every year. For every rich person donating money to AIDS research, there were fifty more with kids who refused to work and wanted to do nothing more energetic every day than take cocaine and wrap their Lamborghinis round lamp posts.

Who needed huge wealth? They didn’t.

Surely they were at the point in their life when they could slow down a little, take more time out. She was doing less work these days, why couldn’t David be the same?

With the same disquiet, Ingrid let the dogs back in, fed them their breakfast and took out the coffee to make hers. She felt like phoning David and asking him what was so bloody important that he’d had to rush off at dawn. But that type of conversation never worked. Being a skilled interviewer had taught her that there was never going to be a civil answer to a question couched in such terms.

‘What do you mean, what was so bloody important…’ he’d respond, and they’d be off arguing.

No, far better to say nothing until later and remark kindly that he must be tired after getting up so early, and they could postpone their dinner out that night so he could go to bed early. And then, he’d explain why he’d been up early, and they’d be having a conversation instead of a hostile interrogation. If there was a problem, he’d tell her then. And Ingrid had the strangest feeling in her gut that there was a problem.

She had breakfast watching satellite news, the dogs at her feet hoping for scraps of wholemeal toast and honey.

‘I promise we’ll go for a walk soon,’ she told them.

She normally loved Saturdays when she had no specific place to be; the luxury of knowing that her time was completely her own thrilled her. But today, she felt unsettled and couldn’t put her finger on exactly why. Keeping herself busy, that was the trick. When she’d walked the dogs, she tidied the kitchen with her usual energy, then went into her small study to make a list of emails and letters she had to write. Nothing from Ethan. She did her best to calm the anxiety she felt at no word from him. She worked methodically for an hour, then powered down the computer, ran upstairs and collected everything that needed to be dry cleaned. Finding a jacket of David’s, she sat down for a moment, thinking about him. Between him and Ethan, all she did was worry. No, she must be positive. Ethan was probably having the time of his life. And as for David…Marcella–that was it, she’d ring her best friend, Marcella.

She went down to the hall phone, the one with the preprogrammed numbers on it, and brought up Marcella’s.

It was an unlikely friendship–Ingrid Fitzgerald, whose interviewing technique exposed the inadequacies of the great and the good, and Marcella Schmidt, image guru, whose job was keeping those inadequacies from the public view. Marcella ran her own spin-doctoring company and taught politicians and captains of industry how to talk to the media. If a formerly babbling, foot-in-mouth minister showed up talking sense and wearing a decent suit instead of a shiny one, odds on he’d been given the Schmidt Treatment. And if a big company boss found himself on an industry think tank that covered him with glory, and made people forget that he’d been caught coming out of a lap-dancing club three sheets to the wind with his arms round two lithe dancers, he’d been Schmidt-ed too. Marcella was brilliant at her job and she loved it. That’s why the two women had hit it off, Ingrid knew: shared passion. So what if Ingrid’s job was to find the cracks in the politicians Marcella had Teflon-coated, they worked in the same lions’ den.

Ingrid knew that if she was photographed in flagrante in a hotel room with some glamorous captain of industry, Marcella would be the one she’d turn to. Not that such a thing would ever happen, but still. If shit ever hit Ingrid’s fan, she’d speed-dial Marcella Schmidt.

‘Hi, Marcella, it’s Ingrid,’ she said now when her friend picked up the phone. ‘How’s the luscious Ken Devlin?’ It was their running joke. Latin-looking god Devlin was television’s hottest young talk show host and one of Marcella’s big successes.

‘Can’t get enough of me.’ Marcella sighed as if she was worn out from his amorous attentions.

‘Still?’

‘Still. Wants to have wild sex with me into the middle of next week.’

‘Only next week? What about the week after?’

‘He doesn’t have the stamina for the week after,’ Marcella said with a grin in her voice. ‘Young men–can’t keep up with older women. That would be an interesting opinion piece for the papers: When your sexual peak and his don’t match.’

‘Only if you want to be humiliated forever for being a forty-something woman writing about having sex with a younger man,’ said Ingrid. She saw that Marcella was kidding. ‘You know the rules: male silver fox and younger woman? Totally acceptable, and man gets slapped on the back by all his envious friends. Female silver fox and young man? Collective yeuch and everyone thinks either she’s paying him or he has an Oedipus complex.’

‘Pity,’ sighed Marcella. ‘I need an op ed idea for the Courier Mail.’

‘Personal never works,’ Ingrid said. ‘You should know: you tell people that often enough. Anyway when did you bonk a much younger man? How did that slip past my radar?’

‘Nothing slips past your radar,’ Marcella retorted. ‘Oh, it was years ago. Technically, it probably doesn’t count as I was only thirty-seven and he was thirty-one, and the age issue only counts when you hit forty. Before forty, you have a permit to screw anything you like. After forty, it needs an act of parliament. Besides, it was before I knew you. Just after I divorced Harry.’

The big difference in their lives was personal: Marcella had been married twice in her youth and divorced. The first was rarely mentioned, but she was still friends with her second. Harry was often around: funny, kind, handsome in a rumpled professor sort of way. Ingrid adored him and was curious as to why he and her best friend had divorced, but because it had all happened before she’d met Marcella, it had never been discussed on a forensic level. Marcella merely talked about how she and Harry were too similar for comfortable living conditions. Clever, opinionated men who were used to being in control were great as friends but very annoying as actual husbands.

When Ingrid saw the two of them together at a party, arguing happily over everything from politics to the merits of the latest movies, she wondered if it would have been different if they’d had children together. Kids rubbed off rough edges very quickly. But that had never happened. After Harry, a suitable settling-down man had never come along. Marcella had looked for him, that was for sure. She’d gone to parties, met men at friends’ dinner parties, taken scuba-diving holidays with a lone-travellers group, trekked Peru and made fabulous friends with two men–a gay couple who ran a successful restaurant in Donegal. But the man of her dreams eluded her. Without him, there were no babies with Marcella’s laughing dark eyes and sallow skin. At forty-nine, Marcella fitted so seamlessly into the role of aunt-by-proxy that nobody would ever guess she’d longed for her own children.

Occasionally, the subject came up. Like the time a journalist phoned Marcella with a blithe request for an interview on a piece called ‘childless by choice’.

‘Childless by choice?’ Marcella had hissed that night when she sat in Ingrid’s kitchen and sank a glass of Stellenbosch red, even though it was a weeknight. ‘Who is childless by choice? Very-bloody-few people, that’s who. And if they are, good luck to them. Let them talk to journalists about their decision and how they prefer not to add to the world’s population or how they know parenting’s not for them and decided to be grown up about it. Good luck to them.’ She was hoarse with anger. ‘But most of us aren’t childless by choice. We’re childless by mistake, childless by never finding the right bloody man, and if we do, he’s leaving being a father till he’s made his money and he’s not interested now, honey, and let’s just have fun! Have you thought about Capri for a holiday?’

‘She’s totally insensitive, that reporter,’ Ingrid said, trying to lessen the blow. ‘When we were doing the general election programme, she did an interview with me and asked me was it depressing at my age to work in an industry where women in their fifties were sidelined because their looks had disappeared.’

David, who was cooking at the stove, exploded with laughter.

‘What did you tell her?’ he asked his wife.

‘I gave her my very intense interviewing stare,’ Ingrid replied with a grin, ‘and said it was sad that women were still judged on their appearance, and that the glory of being older and wiser was not worrying so much about the outward face but rather about the person inside.’

Marcella looked up miserably from her glass of wine. ‘So you didn’t tell her we spend ages discussing plastic surgery and that we’d be having facelifts like a shot if only we weren’t so photographed that people would instantly know we’d gone under the knife?’

David laughed uproariously again.

Ingrid joined in, then sighed. ‘I get so sad thinking that I have to have a facelift,’ she said. ‘Botox is one thing.’ Her hand stroked her smooth forehead. ‘But a facelift is so radical and yes, I know I work in television, but it goes against all the things we believe in, Marcella: that women are brilliant and a few lines on your face shouldn’t make you any less brilliant.’

‘I don’t know what I believe in any more,’ Marcella sighed. ‘I used to believe there was someone out there for me and there isn’t. Just me, my job and people asking me how it feels to be a sour old spinster who’s childless by choice.’

‘Believe in that wine,’ David said, refilling her glass.

‘You’re such a lovely man,’ Marcella said. ‘Why don’t you have a brother for me, David? Why didn’t I ever find someone as nice as you?’

Ingrid and David exchanged a worried look. Marcella didn’t get down very often, but when she did, her emotional elevator went down to the basement at warp speed.

‘I’m not as lovely as you think, Marcella,’ David said kindly. ‘I’d drive you mad, wouldn’t I, Ingrid?’

‘Stone mad,’ Ingrid had agreed.

Ingrid wondered now what Marcella would say if she blurted out her concerns about David, that he’d rushed off to work at first light on a Saturday morning leaving her with the feeling that something was wrong, that David was keeping something from her.

Marcella was lightning quick. ‘Is there trouble with the store?’ she’d ask, which was exactly the question rippling through Ingrid’s mind. She decided not to mention her anxiety to her friend. If there was something wrong, David would tell her. It was disloyal to mention her fears before she had anything concrete to be worried about. Perhaps tonight they’d have a chance to talk.

‘What are you up to today?’ Marcella asked.

‘I was about to ask you that,’ Ingrid replied lightly. ‘I’m here on my lonesome as David has rushed off to Kenny’s to make sure it doesn’t all blow up in his absence.’

‘Men, huh?’ Marcella laughed. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t run them over with a truck.’

Ingrid relaxed. Her lightness had worked. Normally, Marcella was so attuned to people’s tone of voice that she could gauge any mental state from a five-second conversation.

‘Do you want to have lunch with me?’ Ingrid asked. ‘I keep hearing about this new brasserie in Dun Laoghaire near the pier. Want to try it?’

‘Beside the fish place? Tonio’s or Tomasio’s or something? Count me in. Meet you in Dun Laoghaire at one?’ Marcella said.

‘Perfect.’

She dropped off the dry cleaning and arrived at the restaurant at exactly the same time as Marcella. Lunch was hugely enjoyable. They generally tried not to talk too much shop. It would have been wrong to discuss which client Marcella was working with because chances were, sooner or later, he or she would end up on one of the navy-blue leather chairs on Ingrid’s set with Ingrid as high inquisitor. They talked politics, policy, and about people.

It wasn’t gossip, Marcella always pointed out. Gossip implied a nastiness about the discussions and there was never nastiness in their talks. They were interested in human nature, that was all. And they met all human life in their work. In the middle of all the policy talks, business meetings and sound bites, were people who worked hard, got passionate about their jobs, made mistakes, made deals, fell in and out of love.

Marcella and Ingrid were fascinated by the people behind the public façades: who had to make a speech in the Dáil chamber after being up all night with a colicky baby but would never mention it, and who’d use every nugget from their personal life for their own gain while not really caring about their family at all. It was no surprise that they both loved The West Wing, but wonderfully, they also both loved Neil Diamond, dancing and clothes.

Marcella had the knack of wearing layers well. Expensive layers. It never worked when they were cheap layers, Marcella explained, because two cheap T-shirts and a little top worn at the same time looked bulky on anybody. Only the flimsiest fine layers that cost the earth and looked as if they’d been boiled for years in a washing machine, hung with the right sort of casual elegance.

Ingrid, who had a more formal style for television and was used to fitted suits for work and elegantly cut jeans and jackets for weekends, envied Marcella’s exquisite wardrobe.

‘It all looks like you just threw it on effortlessly and yet you look fabulous,’ she said in exasperation.

‘Effortless is very hard,’ Marcella responded, looking down at her layered vest-tops, wrap top, and long, slender skirt in varying shades of silver grey. ‘And expensive. Have you any idea how much these little vest-top things cost? I could buy a Fendi handbag with the cash I spent on this outfit.’

‘That’s obscenely expensive,’ said Ingrid, shocked.

Marcella laughed. ‘You sound just like Molly when she was going through her second-hand stage,’ she said.

‘She still is. Mind you, it’s better than spending millions on clothes.’

‘You old Leftie! You’ve only yourself to blame. You and David gave her a social conscience so she wouldn’t be another spoiled brat celebrity child. It’s nice that she prefers to give money to developing countries than to spend it on clothes.’

‘You’re right,’ Ingrid said proudly. ‘There aren’t many people as kind as Molly out there. Although I’d love her to come round to the idea that you can feed the world and wear nice things. Still, she borrowed a dress of mine for a wedding, so perhaps she’s moving out of the all-second-hand stage.’

‘There must be a man on the scene.’

‘No.’ Ingrid was thoughtful. She rather wished there was. Not that she desired her daughter married off for any reasons of propriety, but because she wanted to think Molly was happy being loved the way Ingrid and David loved each other. Love and honest partnership with someone you cared for and respected: what a joy that was.

It was Ingrid and David’s thirty-year anniversary later that year and they’d talked, idly, about a party and a cruise in the Indian Ocean. They were so lucky, Ingrid thought every time she heard of another marriage going belly-up. And luck was involved, no doubt about it. They worked at their marriage for sure, but it had been luck that had brought them together in the first place, two people so instantly compatible.

Lots of break-ups came as no surprise to Ingrid. As a person wildly interested in human behaviour, she couldn’t be shocked when Laurence and Gillian, old friends of hers from college and married twenty-seven years, separated abruptly. The only surprise was that they’d stuck with each other for so long. Laurence was at his happiest sitting in his garden doing the crossword and planning, some day, to mow the lawn. Gillian played badminton competitively, worked full time and was never home.

She and David, on the other hand, were very different in many ways but they complemented each other. She felt a rush of love for him and wished he’d confide in her over whatever was wrong. He might not understand the fierce, feral passion of a mother’s love, but then, could any man? And she loved him with all her heart, no doubt about it.

When she got home at three o’clock David was back and with a small gift: a tub of goose fat from Kenny’s exquisite food hall.

‘For me?’ she asked in amusement, turning it over in her hands. ‘Am I supposed to rub myself in it…?’

‘It’s for the potatoes tomorrow,’ David said, planting a kiss on her cheek. ‘I know, a tub of bath oil would be better, but Molly’s coming for Sunday lunch and you know what she’s like about roast spuds. This is a present for all of us, not just you. Although,’ he was smiling, ‘you can rub yourself with it if you’d like to…’

He seemed in such good humour that Ingrid knew she must have been entirely mistaken to worry about him earlier. She put her present down, grinning. Many women would have thrown the tub at him, but Ingrid had always been realistic about romance. David, despite working in a store overflowing with feminine gifts, had never been the sort of man who came home every week with perfume and flowers. And Ingrid could cope with that: if she wanted flowers, she bought them herself.

‘There’s nothing like goose fat for proper roast potatoes,’ he went on, opening the fridge and poking in it for a snack.

‘Did you not have lunch?’ Ingrid asked.

‘I had brunch,’ he said from the depths of the fridge. ‘I woke up very early and thought I might as well go into work and get it over with, and then Stanley came in with a BLT

and it smelled so good, we all had them. From O’Brien’s Deli–the place is booming since they got that new cook.’

Ingrid relaxed some more. She knew there was an explanation for his early start. She was right not to have said anything to Marcella.

‘You must be tired, darling,’ she said now. ‘We can skip dinner out tonight if you want.’

They’d planned a pizza out, just the two of them in the place down the road.

‘Well…’ he said and he looked a bit shamefaced. ‘We can’t. Jim Fitzgibbon is over from London, he was on to me this morning, and I’d forgotten I’d promised him dinner next time, and he insists it was tonight we set it up for–’

‘Dinner with Jim and Fiona?’ Ingrid gulped. Fiona was a sweetheart but Jim, one of David’s oldest friends, was a property-obsessed bore.

‘Not Fiona, no,’ said David reluctantly. ‘He and Fiona are going through a bad patch. It’s someone else.’

‘Someone else? Are they getting divorced?’

‘I think that might be on the cards. They’ve separated. He’s very cut up about it. Sorry, love, I know it’ll be a pain for you, but I can’t let him down. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I can say you’re not well or…’

‘I’ll come.’

Solidarity was another vital ingredient in a marriage, Ingrid thought. Women’s magazines from years ago used to go on about how romantic gestures were the be all and end all of a relationship, but Ingrid, recipient of a lovely tub of goose grease, knew there was a lot more to it than that. If David wanted to comfort his old friend about the breakdown of his marriage, she’d be there too. She made a mental note to contact Fiona on Monday. There were few things Ingrid hated more than people who cut off one half of a couple after a split.

‘Who’s this woman he’s bringing tonight?’ she asked David in the car on the way to the restaurant.

‘Don’t know,’ he said simply.

‘You’re desperate,’ she said in exasperation. ‘That’s the sort of thing I like to know.’

‘Ah, that’s only people like you and Marcella,’ David replied, ‘people who are obsessed with the world’s private business. The rest of us are quite happy to meander along.’

‘Are we obsessed?’

‘Totally,’ he replied.

Ingrid was wary of what was waiting for them in the restaurant. Jim was bad enough with the lovely Fiona to offset his awfulness, but God alone knew what sort of woman he’d come up with now. Fiona dated back to the time before he had loads of money.

Ingrid loved eating out. She always reckoned that the people who ran restaurants were the people who really knew what was happening in a city. Renaldo’s was one of the country’s premier spots with a Michelin star to its name and a twenty-year reputation for fabulous food and wonderful service.

But tonight she wasn’t in the mood. Two nights with people she didn’t know was two nights too many. At least Molly was coming to lunch the next day, something to keep her sane.

The dinner was interminable. Jim, florid in a red striped shirt and cream jacket, was in show-off mode and Ingrid didn’t know whether he was showing off to his new amour or just showing off in general.

He was back in Dublin for the opening of an apartment complex and within the first ten minutes the entire restaurant must have heard how they’d ‘cleaned up, totally cleaned up. Cost us fifteen million yoyos, and now we’re on the pig’s back. Sold fifty apartments off the plans. On the pig’s back, David, I tell you!! Yeah, you! We’re ready to order the wine. Let’s have some of that Cloudy Bay, the ’99, I think, and a bottle of Dom Perignon to start. That’ll get the party going!’

Jim’s new woman was a showy brunette named Carmel, an unusually normal name for someone who looked as if she’d prefer to be called something exotic like Kiki or Scheherazade. Carmel was in her late thirties, had clearly been Botoxed and Restalyned to within an inch of her life if her relentlessly smooth forehead and big lips were anything to go by, and was heavily spray-tanned from the roots of her sculpted dark hair down to her pedicured designer-sandal-clad feet. She wore vinyl-red lip-gloss, a very expensive dress and spoke in a faux low voice about herself all night.

‘I’d love to work in television,’ she said.

Ingrid tried to smile. Those words had been the death knell for many an evening.

‘I’m very intuitive, you see,’ insisted Carmel before embarking on a monologue that showed her to be far too fascinated by herself to even ask a single question about anyone else.

Ingrid, who was forever finding herself seated alongside dinner guests with narcissistic tendencies, zoned out and merely nodded or murmured yes from time to time. Experience had taught her that it was fatal to attempt any real conversation. People who liked talking about themselves never had any. Easier by far to smile and acquiesce.

Carmel also made several trips to the ladies’ and returned slightly more animated each time, which convinced Ingrid that her other interest–apart from newly separated millionaires and being intuitive–was cocaine.

Hell wasn’t other people: it was coked-up other people.

By eleven, they’d just finished the cheese and Jim was waving his arm in the air to urge the waiter with the liqueurs trolley to take another turn in their direction. Ingrid thought she might get up and stab Jim with her knife. Or even a spoon. It would be possible, she was sure, if she used enough force. She looked longingly at her husband, but he was avoiding her anguished gaze.

What was wrong with David? He’d been talking in low voice to Jim all night. Even though he knew she was being bored rigid by Carmel, he hadn’t tried to include the two women in their conversation or even to drop the ‘we can’t stay late because we have to go home and let the dogs out,’ excuse.

Ingrid tried to kick him under the table as she was too far away to grab him with a clawed hand and scratch ‘help’ on his thigh. But she couldn’t reach to kick. She glared at him. He knew her signals by now.

‘Another cognac, David? Ah, you will. Sure, it’s Sunday tomorrow. You don’t have to get up or anything. Herself can bring you the breakfast in bed.’ This was accompanied by a nudge and a wink.

Ingrid folded her napkin and put it firmly on the table. ‘Jim, Carmel, what a lovely evening,’ she said crisply, reaching down for her small clutch bag. ‘But we’ll have to pass on another drink. I’m exhausted and I know David is too. Thank you so much.’ She got to her feet, slipped her wrap from the back of the chair and put it round her shoulders.

Jim and Carmel stared up at her, but David, who’d seen Ingrid utilise her emergency departure trick before, merely smiled and got to his feet too. Action was important, a legendary Irish actress had once told Ingrid.

‘If they’re bores, they’re going to want to continue to be bores and no matter how much champagne you drink, that won’t improve. Get up gracefully, move back from your chair, gather your things and say goodbye firmly. There’s no way back from that.’

‘Might they not think you’re rude?’ Ingrid wondered.

‘You do it with style and speed,’ the actress went on. ‘Imbue yourself with the glamour and power you’ve worked for, my dear. You’re a star and, though you might not like to turn it on, you can when you need it. Flick that switch, become the TV star, and state that it’s time for you to go. Never fails.’

It didn’t fail now either.

Jim blustered a little bit.

‘You don’t have to go yet–’ he began.

‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ Ingrid repeated. Really, there were things in her fridge that were smarter than Jim.

‘Goodnight, Carmel.’ Ingrid held out her hand. She couldn’t face the hypocrisy of kissing this woman goodbye.

They didn’t speak in the taxi on the way home. If David had wanted to ensure they didn’t have any civil conversation that night, he’d done a good job, Ingrid thought as she lay in bed, too annoyed by the whole evening to sleep.

He was dozing already and Ingrid sighed and picked up her book.

Ingrid enjoyed Sundays: they were family days and she prided herself on cooking Sunday lunch. She liked cooking. Nothing fussy, just good simple food with no pretensions. Everyone had their favourite. Molly adored grilled fish, salad and roast potatoes followed by Ingrid’s home-made caramel meringue. Ethan loved roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and something sinful in the chocolate department for dessert. David’s favourite was garlicky chicken with stuffing and smelly cheese to follow.

Ingrid’s own favourite was nothing to do with food: it was having them all there.

Today, she had the radio set to her favourite Sunday news chat show, the double doors into the garden were ajar to let a little air in, and the dogs were arranged bonelessly on the tiled floor, worn out after a fast four-mile walk. Ingrid had woken early again and found she couldn’t sleep, except this time, David was fast asleep beside her, looking grey with tiredness. She’d slipped out of bed quietly, and taken the dogs out for their walk before buying the papers and sitting down to read them with a pot of coffee beside her. He’d finally emerged at nearly one, unshaven and unshowered.

‘Coffee?’ Ingrid had asked. It was unlike him to sleep so late and now he looked wretched. ‘You look terrible, David,’ she added. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

No,’ he said and it was almost a growl of exhaustion. ‘I’m overtired.’ He sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

‘You don’t have any pain in your arm or anything?’ she asked, trying to stay calm but feeling terrified because he was looked so unwell. He could be having a heart attack and he mightn’t know it. It would be just like him to sit there and say, ‘Yes, darling, phone for an ambulance if you have a moment.’

‘Don’t fuss, Ingrid,’ he said sharply. ‘I’m fine, really. I’ve a pain in my head, not my arm and coffee would be great. Please,’ he added after a pause.

She nodded, feeling weak with shock. And then anger. There was no need to speak to her like that. She’d only been asking–

‘Surprise!’ said a voice.

‘Molly!’

Their daughter stood in the kitchen, arms full of bags. ‘You’re all getting deaf,’ she said, putting down her stuff and then petting the dogs. ‘I yelled hello when I came in.’

Ingrid shot her daughter a look which Molly could interpret easily after twenty-three years. It was the ‘don’t bother your dad’ look.

Molly nodded imperceptibly and hugged her father gently. Ingrid watched him and could see his face relax.

‘How are you, Pumpkin?’

‘Fine, Dad.’ Molly planted a kiss on his forehead. ‘Late night?’

‘A bit,’ David admitted ruefully. ‘Jim Fitzgibbon was pouring wine into me.’

Molly chuckled, and left her father to give her mother a hello kiss. ‘Since when has anyone had to pour wine into you, Dad?’ she teased, and just like that, the tension went out of the room.

‘Are you calling me a boozer, you brat?’

Both women laughed.

‘If the cap fits…’ said Molly. ‘Only kidding. Where were you, anyway?’

‘Renaldo’s,’ said Ingrid, getting out another cup for her daughter. She poured more coffee and sat down at the table beside her family.

‘How’s Fiona?’ asked Molly.

‘That’s the problem,’ Ingrid sighed. ‘Jim and Fiona have split up, so we had to meet his new woman. I don’t think she was your cup of tea, either, love?’

Ingrid smiled at her husband, a peacemaking smile to say she was sorry she’d been so angry about having to endure the evening, and could he be sorry for being such a grouch?

‘No,’ David agreed. ‘Sorry about that. On the phone, Jim made her sound like a cross between Mother Teresa and Angelina Jolie.’

Molly’s eyes widened. ‘And was she?’

David’s smile to Ingrid reached his eyes. ‘Not really. She looked fine–’