I wouldn’t look at him.
“And then probably kill me for not having more control over you?”
I shrugged. “Pity she wouldn’t kill you for being such a spineless lick-arse every time you’re around Ger Baron. ‘Oh, yes Ger, no Ger,’” I mimicked. “You’re only short of jumping up to make a cuppa for him when he walks into the room. Pathetic.”
“Whatever, Holly. The facts remain: we’re already a week over on this job – now we’re probably going to lose the client altogether – and, in case you haven’t noticed, thanks to this bloody recession, clients of his size are fairly thin on the ground.”
I sat, looking out the window – Seán mute in the back – so Oliver continued.
“I mean, it’s okay for you – you’re back off to New York in a few weeks – but you could try and leave a bit of business for the rest of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” If he’d wanted to get my attention, he had it now.
“I think that’s fairly obvious. I mean, for the love of God, Holly!” He was shaking his head now.
“I was right and you know I was!”
He slammed the wheel with his fist. “That’s not the point!”
“Well, what is the point then?”
“The point is, there’s an easy way and a hard way to do things. It beats the shit out of me why you always pick the bloody hard way!”
“Forgive me but back where I trained that’s how you did a job properly!”
“Oh, don’t start that again.”
“Ah, that’s right, I forgot. This is Irish auditing.” I couldn’t help the sarcasm dripping off my tongue. “I took a class in Irish auditing once. It was very short though – because they’d taken the ethics section out!”
“Well, you can explain all that to Catherine. I’m sure she’ll find your theories very interesting.”
There was no point in saying anything else. Since my arrival in Grantham Sparks on secondment almost five months before, Oliver and I had clashed on virtually every auditing issue that arose. He was right about one thing though – in six weeks I’d be back in New York and cocky little upstart Ger Baron would be somebody else’s problem.
I turned and looked out the window as Oliver guided the car through the Friday-evening traffic back towards the IFSC. My apartment was one of several owned by GS in the adjoining development.
As we pulled up outside, he sighed and turned to me, “Look, I’m not saying that wasn’t very impressive back there but –”
“Oh get lost!” I snapped, slamming the door then half waving to Seán who was cowering in the back seat.
Only when I got inside, kicked off my shoes, took the pins from my hair and poured myself a large glass of Pinot Grigio did I feel the tension start to leave my body.
Out of habit I turned on my laptop and it opened as usual on the CNN website. It was nice to know what was going on back home. Well, back in the States, which I considered home. It was all a bit confusing really – well, confusing to everyone else, that is. I didn’t let the fact that I’d lived in Ireland for nineteen years before moving to New York deter me from never expecting to call Ireland ‘home’ again.
Though, to be fair, this trip back to the old sod had turned out much better than I’d expected.
There was no denying that the Dublin I’d come back to was far, far different to the one I’d left behind nine years before. Pleased with what I’d found, I’d worked hard and, as a result, people took me seriously. They only knew Holly the Achiever. Holly the Problem Solver. I ran my eyes over the well-thumbed books lined up beside my laptop. Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles, Troubleshooting for the Medium-Sized Enterprise, Think on Your Feet – the Twelve Step Approach to Solving Problems at Work. My babies. In fact, it was no lie to say that my favourite possessions in the whole world were my How-to books and my tiny, gleaming MacBook Air. Nothing symbolised the New Holly Green more than these possessions.
And that brought me to the best bit of all about Dublin: here nobody knew anything about me, and I’d never felt the need to fill them in.
Well, apart from one person.
Yes, there was one other reason why my stay in Dublin had been so very enjoyable.
I looked at my watch, feeling the usual twinge of panic starting.
He should be here by now.
I took another long sip of wine. I was being ridiculous, of course he’d be here.
I couldn’t sit still. Switching on the television, I switched it off as quick.
By the time I was halfway through my second glass, a cold sweat had started at the back of my neck. I looked at my mobile.
Don’t you dare.
I looked at my watch again. Only seconds had passed.
He wasn’t coming.
I looked at my phone again.
I could call . . .
You will not.
I picked up the phone.
Put it down. Put it down!
And then the door-buzzer went.
I flung the phone back on the couch and ran to the door. Looking at the hazy figure on the monitor, I almost punched the air with relief.
Thank you, God!
Pressing the switch that released the door, I knew I had only seconds to compose myself.
Be cool, be cool.
I opened the door, but despite my best efforts couldn’t hide the relief that flooded through me.
“I thought you weren’t –” I started to whisper.
But I never got to finish as Oliver Conlon pinned me to the wall, growling, “That fucking suit does it to me every time.”
And then he kissed me in the way I’d waited for since he’d left my bed that morning.
Chapter 2
My finger hovered over the doorbell and, as was my custom at the front door of this particular suburban semi-d, I took a deep breath before pressing it.
It said it all that I didn’t have a key.
Through the wavy amber glass panel in the door I could see someone approach. I released my breath, slowly through my teeth, timing the last tiny hiss to the exact moment the door opened.
“Oh. It’s you. I was expecting Nancy Spillane’s daughter– she’s dropping me over this week’sHello!.”
And breathe again.
Fourteen seconds and I’d disappointed her already.
“Sorry about that, Mam.”
I walked past my mother, into what I called the Green Hall of Fame, stopping briefly, as was my habit, to see what new additions had been made to the collection of family pictures on the wall. And it was quite a collection, so vast in fact that it was hard to see exactly where the pictures ended and the pattern of overblown-roses on the wallpaper began. Of course if my mother had removed the rather large picture of the Sacred Heart that looked mournfully down from the midst of us all she’d have been able to fit even more in, but that would take something like Marsha’s inauguration as President of America. One thing for sure, nothing I’d ever do would be amazing enough to usurp the Lord.
Aha! Two new pictures of Aoife and Arann, Marsha’s twins, on ponies. With rosettes. Good to see the over-achieving was continuing down through the generations . . .
“Aren’t they adorable?”
Mum was beside me, wringing her hands with pride.
“They sure are,” I had to admit. And they were. It wasn’t their fault that their mother had been my arch-enemy ever since I was old enough to walk-later-than-she-had.
Leaving my mother fussing over some of the pics that weren’t aligned to her satisfaction, I sighed and went through to the kitchen-cum-living-room where Dad was sitting with his usual Saturday paper on an enormous couch bedecked with yet more roses.
He looked up, smiling. “Ah Holly, isn’t this a treat!”
“It is, Dad.” I sank down beside him, cosying up to him.
It was the same every time I plucked up the courage to visit. With each stop that whizzed past the train window, the years rolled backwards until it felt like the
last ten years had never happened.
Which is probably the reason that I didn’t visit that often.
“And what divilment have you been up to these days?”
I was tempted to answer ‘Oh, the usual – bank robberies, embezzlement, you know . . .’ but I just smiled and said, “Busy working, Dad, believe it or not.”
Dad had always regarded me in the same way you would a naughty puppy. When I was offered the placement with the Grantham Sparks New York office on graduating, he had slapped me on the back with glee and said, “Go on, ye chancer!” like I had just carried out the employment-equivalent of a jewel heist.
“Good woman yourself!” He shook his paper out. “Is there any good news in this thing at all?”
“Probably not.” I snuggled into him, closing my eyes.
“This country’s gone to the dogs. That’s two construction companies gone into receivership this week alone.”
“Yes, Dad, I know.” I didn’t like to tell him that I was only too well aware of the latest recession casualties – they were clients of ours and I’d been booked for both jobs.
“You’d be better off back in the States.” Dad had worked for many years in America himself – in fact, of the four of us children, only Kelly, my younger sister, had been born in Ireland.
“Well, I’ll be back there this side of Christmas.”
“Good, good. You wouldn’t like them to forget about you and give your job to someone else!”
“Oh Sweet Mother of Divine God! They’ve given your job to someone else?” My mother had entered the room, only catching the tail-end of the conversation. “Oh Holly love, what will you do now?” There was more hand-wringing before she continued in the mournful tone she seemed to reserve only for me, “Though, it’s not surprising really, given all those shenanigans before you left. You could hardly blame the Good Lord, really . . .”
I rolled my eyes. My mother had a checklist of gripes with me that she seemed to need to tick every time we met:
– You haven’t been to Mass and thus are going to Hell
– You’ve coloured your lovely red hair again – it’s too blonde
– You’ve lost more weight – it doesn’t suit you
– You still haven’t been over to visit your sister Kelly in Sligo
– Do you remember how you embarrassed the whole family by having a very public affair with a very married colleague, who then very much left you and returned to his wife and children and thus you are going to Hell?
Same stuff every time. She occasionally tweaked the order to catch me out.
“Don’t worry, Mother. I can always go back to waitressing. Or pot-washing – I was a pretty good pot-washer actually. It’s all in the level of elbow-grease, I found.”
My mother looked aghast and I smiled. It was a source of great family shame that, at nineteen, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up and had gone to live with Auntie Monica in New York while I decided. Every other member of the Green family had known from the age of four what they wanted to do in life, and definitely no other member of the Green family had ever done anything menial while they waited for inspiration.
“Oh Mother, relax, I’m pulling your leg. Tell me the news. How many times was Chad on telly this week?”
Dad gave me a warning poke, but it was too late. The light had returned to my mother’s eyes as she proudly started rooting through video tapes to find the latest segment from Tea at Three or whatever other daily show my older brother had made a guest appearance on that week.
And yes, I’m aware that we were probably the only house in the universe that still used a VCR, but the poor woman couldn’t get the hang at all of “those dreadful delicate disc things”. It was an ongoing joke in the family that the best present you could possibly buy our mother was a fresh batch of blank video tapes, a gift now virtually impossible to source.
After much fumbling she found what she was looking for. And suddenly there he was, all six foot four of him, shoulders like a fireman, obligatory gleaming white smile, my brother, the Celebrity Dentist. This time he was schmoozing some middle-aged dear on a couch, making root canals sound like something she should queue for. Looking at him, I still found it hard to believe that someone whose giant hands once played basketball for Ireland, could make a living from carrying out intricate procedures in people’s mouths. But his rugged good looks coupled with a chance appearance in a toothpaste television ad had catapulted him into the world of the media and now he seemed to spend more time on the TV than he did in the surgery.
“You know, he’s going to be on the Late Late in a few weeks,” my mother whispered almost reverently. “Some new initiative he’s spearheading in schools.”
“I’ll watch out for it,” I said dryly.
“I’ll record it for you,” she promised.
“Any chance we could eat sometime soon, Mary?” Like me, Dad could only take so much of daytime TV reruns.
“Okay, okay.” With one last adoring look at the TV, my mother dragged herself over to the kitchen. “I need someone to set the table.”
Dad poked me again.
I groaned and levered myself up from the couch.
“That’s a good girl,” he said, his eyes already back on the paper.
“Did I tell you Marsha’s coming home for Christmas with the kids?” my mother shouted from the depths of the oven.
Yes, Mother, several times.
“Oh, it will be great, all of us together,” she continued.
I didn’t want to burst her bubble by reminding her that I’d be well and truly back in my lovely Manhattan apartment by then so I just kept setting the table. The fact that I wouldn’t be around for The Great Marsha Homecoming was a relief to be honest. The eldest of us, Marsha had been seven when we’d moved back to Ireland. Her name said it all. Just as Americans embraced their Irish roots by using names like ‘Colleen’ or ‘Shannon’ my mother was likewise embracing her new life, and literally couldn’t think of anything more American than ‘Marsha’.
To date, her firstborn had yet to let her down. Beautiful, blonde and blue-eyed, she was also sunny-natured and gentle. This ensured that no matter how much you tried, you couldn’t hate her.
Not that that had ever stopped me trying.
I’d long ago accepted that I was never going to come close to achieving Marsha-status in the Green household. Having returned to America to study medicine at John Hopkins, she was now a cardiothoracic surgeon based in Washington. Which would have been great, had it not happened that on the very day of my graduation, she was part of the team that carried out life-saving surgery on the American Vice President. It was almost more than Mam could bear to tear herself away from the hourly bulletins, such was her hunger to hear the Golden Child’s name mentioned on TV. Then, to add insult to injury, I’d caught her with a radio and headphones on during the ceremony . . .
“Stop!” There was a screech behind me. “What are you doing?”
I froze, cutlery in mid-air.
“Not that cloth!”
In an instant, my mother had whipped the tablecloth offand was examining it for possible cutlery-inflicted damage.
“It’s a limited edition! It’s not for using!”
I rolled my eyes. I knew exactly where this was going. My younger sister, Kelly, having floated through life in a blur of poetry and patchouli oil (not to mention more suspect vegetative odours), had been my only dysfunctional ally for a long time. But then she too let me down and, after getting a first-class degree in NCAD, was now running her own textile company in the wilds of Sligo. Kelly Green – so kitsch, it was never going to fail. And of course I’d seen her since I came back to Ireland. She’d come up to me in town and we’d had a hedonistic night out just like the old days. But it was easier to say nothing. My mother believed that where two or more of the Green family were gathered together there needed to be a roast, a camera and a Mass at the house at the very least. And poor Kelly was even less reli
gious than me, constantly trotting out theories about evolution which thankfully my mother still thought were about learning to speak properly.
“Did I tell you what they called her in Tatler?” Mam said as she gently folded the precious cloth and put it away, replacing it with yet another rose-spattered concoction.
Yes, Mother, they called her the Irish Cath Kidston, but tell me again anyway . . .
“The Irish Cath Kidston. Would you believe, when I showed it to Nancy Spillane she said Kelly obviously gets her eye for pattern from me, must get it from me, says I have great vision . . . Hang on – I kept a copy for you –”
“Mary! Food!” Dad roared from the depths of the vast couch, correctly envisaging another lengthy delay to dinner.
“Okay, okay, keep your hair on! I’ll get it for you later, Holly love, not that you’re probably that interested, given that you haven’t even been down to visit your sister in the five months you’ve been home.”
No, Mother, I’m not that interested because I have two copies already – the one you posted to me and the one you gave me the last time I was home for dinner.
I sank back down beside Dad. The couch really was cavernous. It was part of the array of furniture that my mother had insisted on shipping back from the States. My dad had tried to remind her at the time that our suburban American home, only deemed to be of average size comparedto its peers, was almost three times the average Irish semi-d but she remained in total denial. The fact that the couch was now covered in a loud floral print always subconsciously made me check my skin for greenfly every time I sank into its depths.
“Any sign of a nice young man?” Dad asked, sensing my dejection.
Mam sniffed.
“Well, maybe there is!” I said, regretting my words the instant they left my lips.
“I hope this one doesn’t have a wife!” My mother couldn’t help herself.
For the hundredth time I reminded myself to enquire of Marsha why she’d seen it necessary to fill Mum in on that episode.
“He doesn’t actually.”
“A criminal record?” Dad poked his head from behind his newspaper, his interest piqued.
Between You and Me Page 2
