‘So let’s stop drinking coffee and nattering and get shopping,’ said Anthea.
Zoey was glad she’d asked both her mother and her friend to help her in her search for the party dress. There wasn’t the same buzz in trying on loads of different outfits if nobody was with her to give an opinion (she didn’t trust the salespeople in shops, ever since the day one sales assistant had told her she looked great in a totally unforgiving style that had, without doubt, made her bum look enormous). But she trusted Lesley and Anthea implicitly and she enjoyed having girlie shopping days with them.
They left the coffee shop and walked out on to the concourse. Zoey felt the surge of adrenalin rush through her, as it always did before she went shopping. It was one of her favourite occupations and she knew she was good at it. Since marrying Donald, it had been something she’d been able to indulge in to a much greater extent than ever before, although in recent months he’d been looking at her credit card bills with a certain amount of shock and making comments about having to cut back a little.
‘Cut back?’ she’d said on the morning he’d (literally) gasped when he’d opened the bill. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re spending the equivalent of a medium-sized mortgage on clothes and shoes every month!’ he exclaimed. ‘How could you possibly need all this stuff?’
‘To look gorgeous,’ she told him as she got up from the breakfast table and put her arms around him, engulfing him in a scented cloud of J’Adore.
‘You always look gorgeous,’ he said.
‘Because I make an effort.’
‘You look gorgeous now,’ he said, ‘and you’re only wearing pyjamas.’
Zoey decided not to tell him that the pyjamas were La Perla and had cost nearly as much as his last suit.
‘You don’t begrudge me clothes, do you?’ she asked, allowing her gleaming hair to brush against his face and swinging her legs over him so that she was sitting on his lap.
‘Of course not.’ For the first time in their married life he didn’t respond to her move. ‘It’s just that – well, you hardly need any more, do you?’
‘It’s not a question of needing.’ She kissed him on the nose. ‘It’s a question of having.’
‘Having?’
‘Being prepared,’ she amended. ‘For every eventuality.’
‘We don’t have that many eventualities you need to be prepared for,’ said Donald.
‘No?’ She put her arms behind his neck and kissed him on the lips this time. ‘What about the night you brought your managing director to the house for a drink? That’s cocktail glam. Or the day we met your friends for lunch at the yacht club? Smart casual but not too casual. Or the night we went to dinner in the flashy restaurant? Sophisticated. Or the day we did the charity walk? Sports casual.’
‘I know you need different things for those events,’ conceded Donald. ‘But there’s not that many of them.’
‘What about when I go out with my friends?’ she asked. ‘I have to look good. I have to let them know that in marrying Donald Fitzpatrick I made the right choice.’
‘Of course you made the right choice,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
‘And I love you too,’ she said as she nuzzled his ear. ‘I want you to think you made the right choice too. I want you to be proud of me when you see me beside all those other women.’
‘Oh, I’m proud of you all right.’ Donald gave in to the allure of her body. ‘How could I not be?’
‘How could you not,’ she agreed as she set to work to help him forget about the credit card bill and remember why it was that he’d fallen for her in the first place.
Zoey had met Donald at a low ebb in his life. He was going through a bad time personally and professionally, and (as he said at the time) the sharp pain in his tooth was the final straw. She was the receptionist in the dental surgery but she’d never seen him before. He confessed, as he cradled his jaw in his hand, that he hadn’t been for his yearly check-up in, well, three years, so it was probably his own fault. Zoey, however, gave him a sympathetic look and told him that nobody ever did what they were meant to when it came to their teeth but she’d find out if Mr Johnson could see him straight away.
‘I reckon you have an abscess,’ she said.
Afterwards, Donald told her that she’d been like an angel, fussing over him, comforting him, calming him. He hated the dentist, always had, hated the noise of the drill and the helpless feeling as he lay back in the chair; hated too the way the dental nurses and receptionists always made him feel like a naughty schoolboy for not looking after his teeth properly.
‘In fact you hate everything about it,’ she said as she keyed in the details of his follow-up appointment. (She’d been right, it was an abscess.)
‘Except you,’ he said.
A week after he’d had his check-up, he’d phoned her and asked her on a date. She’d been surprised and then doubtful because he was way older than her, but she wasn’t seeing anyone herself at the time (having dumped her most recent boyfriend for being a total bore) and she reckoned that it might be a nice night out.
Donald had taken her for a meal at a top city restaurant, followed by a drink in a quiet bar – although she’d nearly bailed out before the drink because he’d mentioned his ex-wife, Deirdre (afterwards often referred to by Zoey as Disgruntled Deirdre), and his two daughters, both in their late teens, who were placing enormous demands on him. The demands were for money, in the case of all three, who seemed to regard the bank of Donald as pretty limitless; and for his time, at least as far as Deirdre was concerned. Donald’s soon-to-be-ex-wife hadn’t seemed to grasp the concept that their impending divorce meant getting out of each other’s lives, and would ring him up whenever she had a minor problem, which she expected him to solve for her immediately.
Zoey wasn’t keen on going out with a man with a money-grabbing ex and teenage daughters, but Donald was good company and far more mature than the guys she normally dated – well, he was more mature, she reminded herself; he was in his forties after all! Nevertheless, she enjoyed being with someone who was confident, who wore nice clothes (she was fed up with guys who thought ripped jeans and a rugby shirt was actually dressed up) and, above all, who treated her well. If Donald said he’d call, he called, and if he said he’d meet her somewhere at seven, he was there at seven. Zoey liked that. It made her feel special.
By their third date, she’d decided that his age and his previous marriage didn’t matter. They got on well together and he was fun to be with. Besides, all of his credit cards were platinum, he drove a top-of-the-range BMW and he was living in a penthouse apartment in the city centre while his divorce from Deirdre was being negotiated. Zoey couldn’t help thinking that she could do a lot worse than Donald Fitzpatrick; that she’d done a lot worse than him in the past, and that she deserved the good times he was giving her now.
They’d married shortly after his divorce came through. Zoey had suffered doubts before their wedding, thinking that Disgruntled Deirdre had somehow managed to get far more out of the deal than Donald had expected or wanted, and worrying that his first wife and children would be a constant drain on their resources; but, as her mother pointed out, the Fitzpatrick family seemed to be very well off and Donald’s father lived in a gorgeous house on Howth Hill, so one way or another Donald was probably a good bet. Besides, Lesley had added, he’s a nice enough guy and not at all bad for someone pushing fifty. She’d chortled at her own comment, which made Zoey poke her in the ribs and tell her not to be a cougar, and to keep her hands off her fiancé.
Zoey had smothered her doubts because she loved Donald, although she had to admit that it wasn’t exactly the sort of hot passion she’d had for some of her previous boyfriends. But those experiences had only made her realise that hot passion eventually faded, and she was satisfied that even if Donald wasn’t the most inventive man between the sheets, he was thoughtful and considerate. Most importantly, he loved her, and she knew that she loved being loved by him too.
She wasn’t entirely sure how the rest of his family felt about her. She knew that his father, Fred, thought she was attractive, because at their engagement party she’d overhead him speaking to his other son, Gareth, and saying that Donald had certainly applied a very different set of criteria to the second Mrs Fitzpatrick compared with the first, and that he’d upped the ante in the beauty stakes, which was no bad thing, the girl was a stunner. That had made her smile. She liked being thought of as a stunner.
Gareth’s response to his father had been non-committal, and although he was always perfectly courteous to her, Zoey couldn’t help feeling that he didn’t rate her as highly as he did his brother’s former wife. Gareth’s own wife Lisette was a bitch, though, with her haughty air and her way of looking at people as though they were beneath her. When they’d been introduced, Lisette had pecked her on both cheeks and said ‘enchanted’ in a way that Zoey thought meant the exact opposite.
There was a sister, too, Suzanne, who hadn’t come to the wedding despite being invited. Suzanne had sent a brief note with her regret card, saying that she was on business in the States and couldn’t come but wishing them every happiness. Donald had been annoyed at the card and muttered that Suzanne still carried chips on both shoulders, that there was nothing stopping her from coming, she was just a hotel employee after all.
Zoey had hoped she’d get on with Sorcha and Karen, Donald’s daughters, but she thought they were bitchy and self-centred and she hated how they only ever seemed to phone their father whenever they wanted something. Which, with both of them, was usually money. Zoey understood perfectly that girls of nearly twenty and eighteen needed cash, but she felt that they could be out there earning it themselves instead of sponging off their father, a habit they’d clearly inherited from Deirdre, who rang at least once a week complaining about something or other.
All in all, Zoey found that being Donald’s second wife wasn’t quite as easy as she’d expected, and she reckoned that an unquestioning payment of her credit card bills was the least he could do to compensate her for the fact that she had to put up with a lot of shit from other people with the Fitzpatrick name.
Another concern for Zoey – although it was for the future and not right now – was what would happen when they had a child of their own. She didn’t want her own precious baby playing second fiddle to the spoilt princesses Sorcha and Karen. She hadn’t discussed children with Donald yet. She wasn’t ready to give up on her social life and ruin her figure, nor was she sure that Donald was ready to start putting his second family ahead of his first.
Eventually, however, she hoped he’d disentangle himself from Disgruntled Deirdre and her grasping children. Just as she hoped he’d inherit a big chunk of his father’s estate. Zoey knew that Fred was a shrewd man; she reckoned he was far cannier than his sons. (She always took Donald’s assertion that he himself was a smart businessman with a liberal pinch of salt. A smart businessman wouldn’t have allowed himself to be shafted by someone like Deirdre.) She was aware that Lisette and Gareth were also hoping to cash in on Fred’s eventual demise, which was why she made sure that she called to Furze Hill every couple of weeks to see how he was. She always dropped in after she’d been for one of her many beauty treatments, and wore a low-cut top or a figure-hugging dress, which she knew Fred liked. It didn’t bother her that the old man ogled her. The way Zoey saw it, he didn’t have much time left and he might as well look because he was never going to get the opportunity to do anything about it. From her perspective, the time spent parading her assets in front of her father-in-law was an investment in her future.
She was hoping that it might result in him leaving the house to her and Donald. Zoey reckoned that they deserved Furze Hill. Donald was the eldest, after all, and he’d had to hand over his lovely Clontarf home to Deirdre. Gareth and Lisette’s house, Thorngrove, was huge. Suzanne lived abroad. So surely nobody could object to her and Donald getting Fred’s house? She could see herself having breakfast on the sun-drenched patio overlooking the sea (though it would have to be renovated first; at the moment the flagstones were cracked and uneven and a potential death trap. Mr Fitzpatrick was lucky that he hadn’t yet tripped over one and done worse things to himself than spraining his wrist). Furze Hill would be a big step up from their current home, and Zoey reckoned that Donald was entitled to it. After all, he’d been the son who’d stuck with the family business; surely he merited extra compensation for helping in its success?
However, despite the fact that her father-in-law was in his eighties, and had cheated death a few times already, Zoey wasn’t banking on Fred doing the decent thing and checking out just yet. Which meant that she still had to keep as much money as possible out of the claws of Disgruntled Deirdre and available to spend on herself, no matter how jumpy Donald got over the bills.
He hadn’t been too keen on the idea of a birthday party either, until she’d pointed out to him that it would be another occasion where he could provoke envy from his friends at having the most beautiful wife in the room. Zoey knew that the wives in Donald’s set couldn’t hold a candle to her, because most them were now relying on Botox, collagen and light-diffusing creams to look their best, whereas she still had the youthful, dewy complexion that they could only dream about. It was a boost to Donald’s ego to know that he was with Zoey, and she wanted to make sure it stayed boosted. Which meant looking her very best in front of all of his friends.
She knew she’d find the dress to help her do just that. And the right shoes, underwear, jewellery too … Zoey smiled to herself. She loved shopping. It was one thing in life that she knew she was really good at. And it was important that her husband was able to allow her to keep doing it.
Chapter 7
After his daughter-in-law had left (he’d been grateful for the shopping and for the bit of company, but he was still glad when she’d gone), Fred went into the living room, with its panoramic views of the sea. But he wasn’t interested in the views today. He opened the web browser on his computer and clicked on his search history. He wanted to go back to some of the pages he’d been looking at earlier.
Fred was comfortable with computers. He’d always been at the forefront of new technology, which was why he’d done so well in the car alarm and security business. He thought machines were a lot easier to understand than people, and far more predictable.
He loved being able to find things out at the click of a button, but it annoyed him how easily he was distracted from the pages he’d set out to look at. Clicking links dragged him off into areas where he didn’t need to be but which intrigued him all the same. He understood why it was called surfing – that was exactly what he felt happened to him every time he was pulled from page to page in an undertow of irrelevant information – but it irritated him all the same.
He opened the last item he’d been looking at and then realised that it was the image of an old newspaper and not the page he wanted. He’d originally searched for it out of curiosity, but events from the year he was born didn’t interest him very much. Fifty-five years ago, though, that was a different story. Fifty-five years ago mattered a good deal to Fred. Despite the proliferation of information on the internet, however, none of it was relevant to what he wanted to find out. The truth was, Fred thought to himself as he clicked on another futile link, he needed a professional to do the work for him. In his younger days he might have been able to track down the people he wanted to track down, but as it was … He grunted in disgust and rubbed his injured wrist. He hated being eighty-one. He hated that he couldn’t depend on his once virile body to behave as he wanted it to behave. In his youth he’d jeered at doddery old gits who took half an hour to cross the road. These days he was a doddery old git himself and he only crossed the road at pedestrian lights. Old externally, of course. Internally he was the same person he’d always been.
Although that wasn’t strictly true. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the keyboard. He was a very different Fred Fitzpatrick f
rom the twenty-five-year-old Fred. Or the forty-five-year-old Fred. Or even the sixty-five-year-old Fred. The last few years were the ones that had changed him. And now he was a softer and less driven Fred. Maybe even a regretful Fred.
He hated having regrets, that was the thing. He never used to regret anything. He didn’t regret for a second all the time and energy he’d poured into his business over the years, even though he knew of lots of people who said that they wished they’d spent more time with their families. He thought he’d spent exactly the right amount of time with his. He didn’t regret spending the money he’d made on buying a statement house in one of Dublin’s most affluent areas. He didn’t care that he was rattling around in it on his own, or that most of his neighbours were – in his eyes – pretentious tossers. (He didn’t regret not getting to know them either. Assholes, the lot of them.) He didn’t regret his marriage to Ros, or even the affairs that had peppered it. These things happened. There was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t regret how he’d brought up his children, because in the end, they’d learned to stand on their own two feet. He’d had a reason for everything he’d done, at home, at work, socially. He’d lived a full life, a happy life, and if there was one thing he’d learned during it, it was that there was no point in regrets.
But damn it, he couldn’t help regretting Dilly. He couldn’t believe that he kept thinking of her now, her pretty heart-shaped face infiltrating his dreams and reminding him that he’d once loved her. He didn’t want to have to chalk Dilly up as a regret. But he couldn’t help it. He’d have to do something about it.
He couldn’t have said or done anything when Ros was alive. That would have rocked the foundations of their marriage in a way that his occasional affairs never had. Ros knew nothing of Dilly and he’d seen no point in telling her. His wife had been an understanding, supportive woman (her friends called her a saint, but of course she bloody wasn’t; she just knew that she wouldn’t do any better than him), but she wouldn’t have been supportive about Dilly. He knew that.
Things We Never Say Page 6
