‘A what?’ she asked.
‘Not in education, employment or training,’ he responded.
‘I wish I was in any of those things,’ she retorted. ‘I’m doing my best.’
She didn’t tell her mother that Des was needling her. He had a point. Though she wished he’d do it in front of Lola and not when she wasn’t there.
Much to her relief and surprise, she was eventually offered a job at a jewellery design studio in Dun Laoghaire. She hoped she’d be adding to the experience she’d already gained with the Jurados, but she realised quickly that Tina Garavan simply wanted an assistant and not someone who was interested in doing her own thing. Bey felt as though her career had taken a backwards step as she spent her day cleaning moulds and tidying up the workshop, but it had the advantage of finally removing her from NEET status, a phrase she used when she took Lola out to dinner with her first pay cheque.
‘A what?’ asked Lola in exactly the same bewildered tone that Bey had used when she’d first heard the expression.
Bey explained it to her mother, who laughed.
‘It’s true, though,’ Bey said. ‘I was pretty much sponging off you for a while. And to be honest, I still will be. I’m not earning enough to move out yet. I feel so hopeless!’
‘I’m happy to have you,’ said Lola. ‘And I’m sure you’ll get what you want eventually.’
Bey wasn’t as confident as her mother. To help supplement her income she set up a workbench in the shed at Ringsend, having bought it and a set of tools cheaply from Tina. She was going to work on her own designs, she told Lola, and try to sell them at various markets. Like Gran and her tea cosies, she added, which made Lola smile.
‘You’ve come on a lot,’ said her mother one night when she dropped by the shed to see how things were going. ‘That really is beautiful.’ The pendant, inlaid with glass stones, was one of Bey’s spider’s web designs.
‘It’s for you,’ she said as she handed it to Lola. ‘To say thanks.’
‘You don’t need to make me things to thank me,’ said Lola. ‘I’ve told you a million times I love having you here.’
‘I’m in the way,’ said Bey. ‘I bet Des would normally drop by a lot more than he does.’
Lola shrugged. ‘Possibly. But he’s very busy at the moment. The downturn . . . well, it’s becoming a crisis for him too at this stage.’
‘I thought he said he was grand.’
‘He has mortgages on all the properties. Some of the tenants have lost their jobs and have to move out. It’s difficult. It’s difficult for me too.’
‘With him or at work?’ asked Bey.
‘Both,’ replied Lola. ‘We’re losing clients too, which isn’t altogether surprising. Things will be tricky for a while.’
‘You won’t lose your own job, will you?’
‘I hope not,’ said Lola. ‘But nothing’s certain in this world. Except,’ she added with a smile, ‘that the most important person in my life is you.’
‘I shouldn’t always be,’ said Bey.
‘You’re my only daughter. My only child. You’ll always be the most important person to me.’
‘It’s a lot of responsibility,’ Bey said as she used a cloth to buff a pendant. ‘Being the repository of all your hopes and dreams.’
Lola looked at her anxiously. ‘Do you really feel that way?’ she asked.
‘All I meant was that your love should be shared,’ Bey assured her. ‘And I suppose . . .’ She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘You want so much for me,’ Bey told her. ‘I didn’t realise it before, but I see it now. You want me to have the best life and the best job.’
‘Of course I do!’ cried Lola. ‘That’s what all mothers want for their children.’
‘But I get it wrong sometimes,’ said Bey. ‘And I’ll undoubtedly get it wrong again. I don’t like to think of you letting opportunities for your own happiness go begging while you’re waiting to pick up the pieces for me.’
‘I hope all your mistakes are minor ones,’ Lola said. ‘But I’ll always be here to pick up the pieces.’
‘Oh, Mum, you’ve been wonderful to me forever!’ Bey hugged her. ‘All I’m saying is lighten up a bit and enjoy your own life too. And don’t . . . don’t fall out with Des because of me.’
‘I do enjoy my life,’ protested Lola as they left the shed together. ‘I know things get tricky from time to time, but I’m doing all right. And as for Des – he’s a completely separate issue to you.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ asked Bey when they were back in the house and sipping coffee at the kitchen table.
‘Sure you can.’ Lola smiled at her. It was a long time since she’d had a heart-to-heart with her daughter and she was enjoying it.
‘Did you and Dad ever love each other?’ asked Bey. ‘You know, were you ever properly in love? Did he make your heart race and stuff like that?’
‘Yes,’ said Lola. ‘Yes, he did. But there was always something missing and I never really knew what it was. Plus,’ she added, ‘he imagined me as the girl he dreamed of marrying, not the girl I actually was. Have you found someone who makes your heart race, Bey?’ She looked at her daughter hopefully.
‘Nothing makes my heart race like jewellery.’ Bey grinned.
‘Hopefully one day you’ll think differently,’ said Lola.
Bey thought for a few moments before asking her mother if she’d ever thought that marrying Philip would’ve been a good option. Or that the money might have been nice.
‘The last reason for marrying anyone is money,’ Lola said. ‘But I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder sometimes whether marrying your dad wouldn’t have been an easier choice.’
Bey was surprised by the vehemence of her mother’s words. She got up and hugged her.
‘I do love you, you know, Mum. I probably don’t say it enough.’
‘You don’t need to.’ Lola hugged her back. ‘I know it already.’
Because it was Saturday, both of them slept late. Over breakfast, Lola suggested it might be nice to have a girlie day in town together, so they walked to Grafton Street and spent a couple of happy hours wandering around the shops before grabbing lunch in one of Dawson Street’s brasseries.
‘D’you mind if we walk past Warren’s?’ asked Bey when they’d finished.
‘Why?’
‘I’d just like to see it,’ she replied.
Lola shrugged and they turned towards Duke Lane. The shop had recently been renovated. Lola said there’d been a piece about it in the Irish Times , showcasing the brand-new interior and the most recent range – the Adele Hyacinth – which was designed with lapis lazuli stones.
‘It’s not my favourite,’ she confessed as they stood outside and looked at the complex necklace and earrings on display. ‘I suppose there’ll be a new design this year in time for the Christmas market.’
‘They always start with a ring, don’t they?’ remarked Bey.
‘Then they add the rest over the course of a few years.’ Lola nodded. ‘Though I’m not sure that’s a great way of doing it any more. I think they should try to launch it as a complete set every time. Not everyone would buy all of it, but it would give them a choice.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Bey.
‘Still, your dad knows what he’s doing. He’s been running things on his own for a while now, and perhaps being cautious with the releases while the economy is flatlining is a good thing.’
‘I wonder will they still do the range when Adele dies?’ mused Bey. ‘Or will they launch a new one? They could call it the Donna, although I can’t really imagine her stepping into Adele’s shoes, can you?’
‘Donna is terribly unassuming,’ agreed Lola. ‘I can see why they loved her after me, but it’s hard to see her as the face of Warren’s. The Ice Dragon still casts her spell over them all.’
‘You really shouldn’t call her that,’ said Bey. ‘Though it’s quite stunningly appropriate.’
<
br /> The two of them walked away and their conversation turned to other things. But Bey couldn’t help wondering what life would have been like as part of the Warren empire. And what difference it would have made to her own life if her mother had made different choices.
As she continued to work at the studio in Dun Laoghaire during the day and in the shed at night, Bey considered ways in which she might kick-start her career. Even if she hadn’t learned much about design from Tina, she was picking up a lot of tips on how to run a small business. Tina was very focused on the practical side of things, which hadn’t been a high priority for Bey, but she realised that dealing with suppliers and keeping up to date with the bank accounts and other administrative paperwork was just as important as turning out good design. Because, Tina had said one day, if the company went bust, they weren’t much good to anyone.
And then the email from Will Murdoch arrived. It was brisk and businesslike but made her gasp with excitement.
He was suggesting that she apply for a job with Van Aelten and Schaap, a family firm based in London and Amsterdam who were looking for an assistant designer. Bey had heard of the two-hundred-year-old firm before. They specialised in haute joaillerie – high-class, luxury jewellery – and working for them would be an amazing opportunity.
I do a lot of work for them , he wrote. They’re a great company and don’t hire that often. But I think you’d be well suited if you were interested.
Bey couldn’t wait until Lola got home that night to tell her.
‘Of course I mightn’t get the job,’ she said in order to temper their excitement. ‘In fact I probably won’t. I’m sure there are plenty of other designers out there who’d be just as good.’
‘Would you be based in Amsterdam or London?’ Lola’s only reservation about it was that Bey would be leaving Dublin again. She’d grown used to having her around and she loved the fact that her daughter was a more confident, outgoing person than she’d been before she left. Both Birmingham and Córdoba had been good for her, she thought, suddenly seeing Bey as a young woman and not simply her only child. And this job might be the making of her.
‘Everyone is employed by the head office in Amsterdam but I’d be working in London,’ said Bey as she skimmed through the printout she already knew by heart. ‘Oh, Mum! I’d be working with proper gemstones! Can you imagine?’
Even as Lola smiled at her, she could see in Bey’s eyes something of the enthusiasm she’d once seen in Philip when he’d talked about rubies and diamonds. It’s in the genes, she thought. No matter how much I try not to think it, she’s a Warren too.
Bey spent a few days crafting her CV before sending it off. An almost immediate reply asked her to come for interview, and two weeks later she was sitting in front of Clara Kotze, the company’s head designer, at the Bond Street store and workshop.
‘This was made for the Tsarina Alexandra,’ Clara said as she showed her a photo of a magnificent tiara from a bound book of Van Aelten and Schaap designs. ‘Like with many of the imperial jewels, she sewed them into her corset when the family was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks.’
It was the sort of thing Adele might do, thought Bey. Perhaps if the Tsarina had possessed as sharp a tongue as Adele Warren, the fate of the Russian royal family might have been different. She couldn’t imagine anyone having the nerve to shoot her grandmother even if they were ordered to. Adele would fix them with her basilisk glare and they would wilt on the spot.
She continued to turn the pages of the book, exclaiming over the photographs of some of the more memorable pieces.
‘Of course we take a more modern approach to our designs now,’ said Clara. ‘But we’re a firm built on tradition and our customers know what they want from us. We like to think of ourselves as classic jewellery makers.’
‘I can see that.’ Bey nodded. ‘I’d love the chance to work here. I really would.’
Her excitement knew no bounds when she was asked to a second interview in Amsterdam.
‘They must really want you if they’re flying you to London and Amsterdam,’ said Lola.
‘I hope so,’ said Bey as she danced around the kitchen with delight.
She’d emailed Will after her first interview, thanking him profusely for telling her about the job. When they asked her for the second interview, she emailed him again.
I’m in Amsterdam myself right now , he replied. Would you like to meet for coffee afterwards?
She arrived close to the Van Aelten and Schaap Amsterdam headquarters on Grimburgwal with plenty of time to spare, so she took a little time to explore the warren of narrow streets, lined by traditional buildings with curved gable roofs and neatly painted doors and windows. There were quite a few jewellery shops, she realised, many of them new and funky but others specialising in more traditional work. But of them all, Van Aelten and Schaap’s was the most impressive, having a wider street frontage and overlooking one of the city’s many canals.
She was nervous as she pressed the old-fashioned bell, and when she was admitted to the reception area – which was decorated as though it were a turn-of-the-century salon – she realised her heart was racing.
But she relaxed once she was brought upstairs to the meeting room, where she was welcomed by Gerritt Van Aelten, who looked after the London business, and Rolf Schaap, who was based in Amsterdam.
‘We’re a traditional company,’ Rolf told her when she remarked that the building was like a perfectly preserved piece of history. ‘But we also know that we must move forward. That’s why we’re looking for a new designer for our team.’
Bey had already emailed them her portfolio of designs, but she’d brought samples with her that she laid on the walnut desk in front of her. Gerritt and Rolf looked at them critically, exchanging glances from time to time but not saying anything, which left her feeling very nervous. Finally Rolf said that the designs were beautiful and the work was pretty good too, which, he added, impressed him because he liked to know that his designers understood form and function and could make pieces themselves.
‘Not that you’d be making anything.’ Gerritt smiled at her. ‘We have a great team to do that. All we want from you is innovative designs that fit in with our ethos.’
‘I’m confident I can do that,’ said Bey. Which was perfectly true. There were things in her life that she wasn’t in the slightest bit confident about – her relationships with men, her looks, her fashion sense and her inability to drive a car being chief among them – but when it came to design she had a self-belief that had been enhanced by her months in Córdoba and the encouragement of the Jurados.
‘It’s tradition that keeps us in Amsterdam, but our main design centre is in London,’ Gerritt said. ‘You’d be reporting directly to Clara Kotze and to me.’
‘It all sounds fabulous.’ Bey’s interview face finally slipped and she beamed at him. ‘I’d love to work with you. Your jewellery is absolutely amazing and I’d give anything to be part of it.’
Gerritt smiled. So did Rolf.
And when they shook hands with her and told her they’d be in touch very soon, she knew that this was the only job in the world she wanted.
Will had suggested meeting in a coffee shop on Singel, a short walk away. She crossed the narrow bridge, enchanted by the sheer volume of bicycles chained to it, as well as by the sparkle of the sunlight on the grey-green water of the canal. Then she turned towards the café, which she’d marked on her local map. For a moment she didn’t recognise Will, sitting at one of the pavement tables at the water’s edge. In his faded jeans and cotton T-shirt he looked considerably younger and less intimidating than on the previous occasions she’d met him, and she told him this even as he gave her a formal handshake and her heart did a backwards flip.
‘I think that’s a compliment,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it as one anyhow.’
‘Sorry, was I horribly rude?’ she asked as she sat down. ‘It was just that at the funeral you looked like a total businessman. Now you’re l
ike a real person.’
He laughed. ‘Well the tables are turned, because you look very executive,’ he said.
Bey was wearing a pair of navy trousers and a matching jacket she’d bought in Zara. The dangling earrings and matching pendant around her neck were ones she’d made herself. Rolf and Gerritt had commented on the clever way she’d set the glass stones so that they appeared to float in their settings.
‘I wanted to make a good impression,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it was your talent and not your clothes that made the impression,’ said Will.
‘I hope so.’ She smiled. ‘Thanks so much again for telling me about this job. Even if I don’t get it, the whole thing has been a great experience.’
‘Fingers crossed you do,’ said Will.
‘You said in your email that you do quite a lot of work for Van Aelten’s,’ she said when the coffee had arrived and she’d tipped some sugar into the froth of her cappuccino.
‘Actually, I’ll be joining them full time at the end of the month,’ he said. ‘I used to work for myself but they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’
‘I hope they do the same for me,’ she said. ‘I like working for myself but working for Van Aelten and Schaap would be a dream come true. My only worry is that my designs are more contemporary than theirs.’
‘Obviously the whole vintage look is a big part of the company,’ said Will. ‘But they don’t want to miss out on other markets too. I think you’d be a good fit.’
‘I hope so.’ Her words were fervent. ‘And . . . and it would be great to work with you too.’
‘I spend most of my time on the road looking for the perfect stone,’ he said. ‘You only see me when I turn up with something that needs lots of TLC to turn it into a thing of beauty.’
What Happened That Night: The page-turning holiday read by the No. 1 bestselling author Page 23
