The Truth Club Page 9

But Mum and Dad just didn’t like the idea of the mountain bike. They didn’t want their well-behaved, pigtailed daughter taking off for dry brown hills and lumbering over tough, dusty terrain. What if I got stranded someplace with a flat tyre or something else that had to be fixed? Bikes could be quite temperamental. And a young girl shouldn’t be out in the wilds on her own, anyway; an adult should be present. I pleaded and pleaded, but they wouldn’t budge. It did make them think I should have a hobby, so they decided I should take piano lessons, which I hated.

  But years later, when April said she wanted a mountain bike, things were different. We were back in Ireland, my parents had managed not to divorce and April appeared to be a full genetic member of the family; so, in the grand scheme of things, a mountain bike didn’t seem such a big deal. She got one. It was hardly even discussed. She took off on her bike and then came back on it, and we began to see her as a rugged, outdoorsy person who took risks and had adventures. And maybe people would have seen me that way, too, if I’d got my mountain bike; but I didn’t.

  And now I’m lost. I’ve left the café immersed in these memories, and I must have walked straight past the building where the reception is being held. The street numbers don’t seem to follow any logical pattern; even the landmarks Greta mentioned don’t seem to exist. Time has fast-forwarded to five-twenty in what seems like three minutes. Greta will be angry, because all her favours come at a price: I am virtually under orders to attend this reception and walk around looking fascinated and making careful notes while interviewing ‘top young designers’.

  Maybe I should just go somewhere else. Sit by the pond in St Stephen’s Green and dream…

  But of course I can’t. What am I thinking? I go into a newsagent’s and ask them where the store is; it’s just down the road, apparently, on the left. How can I have missed it? I race out. Beads of perspiration are gathering on my forehead. There it is – of course it is. I dart through the huge glass door.

  I scan the room. I don’t see The Sunday Lunch’s photographer. That will disappoint Greta. She seems to think I can boss the pictures editor around and demand that he include certain photographs in the paper, but I simply don’t have that kind of clout. I grab a glass of sparkling water. I mustn’t have any wine. I must stay sober and focused. I must dart around the room like a blue-arsed fly, looking fascinated.

  I take a deep breath and am about to launch myself into the throng when I see him. He is standing by the big rosewood drinks table – the man I somehow know, although I have never even spoken to him. Nathaniel, the beautiful blue-eyed stranger.

  Chapter Nine

  I stare at the Beautiful Stranger as though he were a famous sculpture in a Florence art gallery. I gawp like an American tourist who has never been to Europe before and finds it all fascinating. I want to reach out and touch him, trace the beautiful dark curve of his eyelashes. I’ve never seen eyelashes like that before, so long and thick, above such clear blue eyes.

  ‘Sally, you made it!’ Greta swoops down on me. ‘What happened to you? There are so many people I want you to meet.’ She looks more tall and muscular than ever, and her long black hair is tied up in a chignon. She’s wearing a bat-winged silk thing that she probably painted herself.

  Greta grabs my arm and hauls me over to a small, wiry man who appears to be wearing white cotton pyjamas. ‘This is Tobias Armitage.’ She beams at us both. ‘Sally just loves your sofas, Tobias. She’s from The Sunday Lunch.’ In Greta’s world, people don’t just like sofas, they love them. It’s her way of bolstering the artistic temperaments of her clients.

  Tobias looks at me and I look at Tobias. I’ve never heard of his sofas, but this is a mere technical detail. Tobias clearly sees this as a chance for sofa fame and grabs it with his unusually hairy hands. The hairs are dark and long, and I find myself looking at them for far longer than is polite. I can’t seem to focus on what he’s saying.

  I keep glancing over at Nathaniel to see if he’s still there; I almost expect him to disappear like a mirage. What’s he doing here? I think. I thought he’d gone to live in New York.

  According to Tobias, one of the high points of anybody’s life is choosing a sofa – preferably one of his sofas. ‘These days, people want more from a sofa than just a place to sit,’ he tells me in his nasal voice. He also has nose hair. ‘In many ways, a sofa is a new member of the family.’

  Nathaniel is leaning languidly against a large and very minimal wardrobe, eating a sausage roll. He looks relaxed and laconic. I notice this even though I am scribbling furiously in my notebook, noting that Tobias likes the colours anthracite, ‘donkey’, burgundy and oatmeal. He believes it is worth paying that bit extra for built-in stain-resistant fabric protection. Sofas are his life.

  I must ring Diarmuid. I must ring him right now and tell him to take me away from here. I need counselling. I need someone to hypnotise me out of these ridiculous feelings I have for this man. Nathaniel is all icing and no cake, I’m sure of it. I am not the sort of person this happens to. It doesn’t happen to anyone.

  And then I remember I am wrong. It does happen to some people. It happened to my parents. My father saw my mother across a crowded room after a concert, and that was it. He loved her high, gleeful laugh, her irreverence. He said there was a golden buzz in the air around her; even across the room, he could feel it. He used to talk about that night a lot when I was little. I knew the story as well as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. I loved that story; and then he stopped telling it. You can’t tell that kind of story with a broken heart.

  I want to run away. I can’t stay in this room with Nathaniel. He may look over at any moment, and I may swoon with longing into Tobias’s big hairy arms. Tobias also has tufts of hair growing out of his ears.

  ‘Try to obtain a fabric swatch before making a decision,’ Tobias is saying. ‘Especially if you’re matching your sofa to an existing colour scheme.’

  Tobias’s sofas are driving me crazy. I feel antsy and itchy, like when I was a kid and wanted to hare off into the hills on my mountain bike.

  ‘Thank you so much, Tobias; that was really… interesting. I’d better go off now and…’

  ‘I understand, Sally. Places to go, people to see.’ He smiles jauntily. There are even long dark hairs peeping over the top of his open shirt. He must look like a gorilla in bed.

  I really want a huge glass of wine. And a cigarette. I used to smoke with Erika, when we were sitting around at social events realising that we would never meet anything close to a soulmate. As we were smoking our cigarettes, we often said we wished we were lesbians, because Dublin seemed so full of interesting, warm-hearted women who kept meeting each other when they were supposed to be meeting interesting, warm-hearted men. Deep down, we began to prefer women in many ways (though not in bed); women just seemed nicer. I even felt that way when I married Diarmuid.

  But I don’t feel like that when I look at Nathaniel. He’s reminding me of all the stupid longings I thought I’d ditched. My poor father must have felt just like this when he saw my mother, and look what happened to him. Maybe I should just go over to Nathaniel and say something incredibly rude. That would put an end to it.

  I stand behind a large potted palm tree and watch him like a detective. He’s just as I remember him from that party long ago. He is tall and lanky, and the top two buttons of his white cotton shirt are open; as far as I can tell, he is not troubled by excessive body hair. His fringe flops boyishly over his high, solemn forehead. He is steady and sure, and he’s talking to a young woman with a purple fringe. The rest of her hair is dark and shiny and tied back in a chignon. She’s called Eloise. I know this because I interviewed her some months ago about her cabinets. She just loves her cabinets. And that passion makes her eyes glow; that passion transforms her. I need a passion like that, something I really love doing. It would change everything; I know it would. How is it that some people find their passion so easily and others don’t even have one?

&n
bsp; I want to be Eloise. I want to be standing opposite Nathaniel chatting away casually. I don’t want to feel this shy, this vulnerable. I’m married. And Nathaniel is married too. Why do I keep forgetting that? I feel I’m radiating so much lust that everyone must notice it. That’s all it is – plain lust. I think longingly of Diarmuid and the restful hours we’ve spent discussing whether we should build a conservatory. Diarmuid knows the real Sally. He married her. I must find her again, for him and for myself.

  And they’ve put on Riverdance. We’re all supposed to love Riverdance – it’s part of that jolly, hoppy, raring-to-go Irish thing – but I need something more relaxing and enigmatic, a saxophone, a flute. Sometimes I get tired of how fascinated we are by what it means to be Irish. I think I’ll scream if we have another referendum. The world is a big place. DeeDee knew that – I don’t know how I know this, but I do. And I somehow know she’d understand what I’m feeling right now. That sound in the distance, that lure to another life that always seems better than the one you’ve got.

  I grab a glass of wine. I don’t care, I must have one, even if I am the cheapest drunk in Ireland. Maybe I’m on something. Maybe someone has slipped love mushrooms into the sushi.

  And Nathaniel has seen me. He’s looking at me just like he did last time, dragging me far out to sea with his deep blue stare. He’s the man I should hit over the head with a loofah, not poor innocent sofa-obsessed Tobias. It’s rude to stare. I should march up to Nathaniel and tell him that. He’s a married man; he should know better. Maybe he does this all the time.

  Greta introduces me to a man called Larry, who is apparently one of the evening’s most important guests, because he buys bundles of stuff from young Irish designers and has some very important connections. I mumble something. Nathaniel is still talking to Eloise. She has one of those small, bright faces that virtually glow, and her big brown eyes belong to some innocent, adorable creature, a deer or a puppy. She practically pinned me to the wall at another reception because she wanted to tell me about her cabinets. I could never grab someone like that and demand that they listen to me, but Eloise is incredibly ambitious; she knows what she wants, and she just goes for it and doesn’t care who gets in her way. Maybe I should be more like Eloise. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with my life.

  This is unbearable. Every time I look at Nathaniel, he looks at me and doesn’t even smile. Eloise looks over at me too, and glowers. She looks as if she’d like to bite me. This is clearly some kind of test, sent to make me realise how much I want to be married to Diarmuid. I must try to phone Diarmuid as soon as Larry is off helping himself to another plate of Irish stew.

  Larry has large breasts. I know I shouldn’t be dwelling on this sort of detail, but the fact is, he does. Maybe it’s something to do with the contraceptive hormones that get into the water supply. I bet Diarmuid would have an interesting opinion on Larry’s breasts, now that he’s studying biology. Maybe I should mention it to him when I phone him. The wine has clearly gone to my head.

  Larry is Irish-American. He’s fat and balding, and he made his millions from feminine hygiene – I haven’t been able to bring myself to ask him the details. He ‘just loves’ Ireland, the golf and the food and the sunsets and the sweet Irish air… What he means is that he loves the rich Ireland, the insulated one where everybody is nice because you are paying them such big bucks. There is a greedy, acquisitive glint in his eyes. He is the male equivalent of Eloise, though of course not nearly so attractive. They even have the same high, pert breasts.

  Greta is watching us carefully and smiling. She’s obviously pleased that I’m being so polite to her VIP guest. She darted over and gave me another press release a moment ago. I haven’t even looked at it. It’s probably about those disgusting table-mats she’s been raving about. They look like matted sheep droppings.

  Larry wants to take me out to dinner tonight. He says I have a lovely accent and remind him of some French actress.

  ‘Larry, I’d… I’d love to, but I’m married,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, Sally, I’m not suggesting anything… you know…’ He waves a bulky arm vaguely. ‘I don’t have any friends in Dublin, except Greta. I just want a bit of company and an early night.’ I almost believe him.

  Larry starts telling me how glad he is that Greta introduced us, because it can be really lonely being on your own in a foreign city, even though Dublin doesn’t really feel foreign, Dublin always feels like home… Oh, feck it; it’s beginning to look like I’ll have to have this meal with him. Greta has done me so many favours, and she is looking at us so hopefully.

  ‘That meal sounds… lovely,’ I say to Larry. ‘But I’d better go to the toilet – I mean restroom – first.’

  ‘Fine. Take as long as you want,’ Larry says, as if I somehow need his permission. I decide that if he tries any hanky-panky I’ll squirt him in the face with my aerosol deodorant.

  I head grimly to the ladies’. As I push my way through gorgeous, happening top young designers and their acolytes, I don’t look for Nathaniel. I haven’t even thought about him for ten whole minutes. The whole effect seems to have worn off; it was like the brief high one gets from eating too much sugar. He’s not standing by the rosewood drinks table any more. He must have left, and I’ll probably never see him again. Oh, the relief of it!

  I don’t touch up my make-up in the ladies’. I just have a pee and dial Diarmuid’s number. I’m going to tell him I want to cook him steak and chips and hand-feed him Turkish Delight tomorrow. That should cheer up his studying. But, when I dial, a recorded voice says Diarmuid’s phone is out of range. How can that be? Where is he? Maybe he’s giving Charlene a driving lesson. I’ll try to ring him again in an hour.

  I stuff my press releases into my bag and set my face into a grim, determined expression. Then I sweep out of the ladies’ into the low-lit corridor.

  ‘Let’s go.’ He darts from behind a column and whispers the words in my ear. Goodness, Larry is getting a bit too enthusiastic. There are people I should thank and say goodbye to, and I need to ask that woman who makes those mosaic lampshades to email me some photos. I don’t even glance at him. I look straight ahead. ‘Look, Larry, there are a few things I need to do before –’

  ‘I’m not Larry.’

  ‘What?’ I turn on my heel, astonished.

  ‘I’m Nathaniel.’

  I can’t speak. I’m just staring at him. It can’t be, but it is.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Where?’ I say to Nathaniel. ‘Where do you want us to go?’ I’m behaving as if this happens to me all the time.

  ‘Let’s just get out of here.’

  It’s a dream; it must be. They definitely put something in the sushi. I gulp and lean against the wall.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  I don’t answer. I want to run away and hide somewhere. Things like this don’t happen to me. They might have happened to the Sally who wanted a mountain bike, but not to the Sally I am now. Nothing has prepared me for this situation.

  ‘You’re trembling.’ Nathaniel touches my arm; his hand feels warm and strong. I flinch. ‘Relax.’ He smiles. ‘You don’t have to have dinner with Larry. I’ve come to rescue you.’

  This is when I should say that I don’t want to be rescued, that I want to have dinner with Larry because it will please Greta. But I don’t say anything.

  ‘If we don’t move fast, Larry will come out here and find you,’ he grins. He’s acting as if this is all a laugh, but it’s actually dreadfully serious. I don’t just leave important Irish-Americans in the lurch after I’ve promised to have dinner with them. I keep my promises… I think of my marriage; well, not all my promises, perhaps, but most of them. My sense of duty is widely known and appreciated.

  ‘You’re looking very worried, Sally.’ His eyes are bright and teasing.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ I demand indignantly. This is good. This is more like the old Sally. She would tell Nathaniel, very calmly and politely, that she is a
married woman and her husband doesn’t like her running away from receptions with total strangers.

  Dear God, I think, as I clasp my handbag to my chest. Maybe this is what happened to DeeDee. Maybe she was living a perfectly ordinary decent life until some stranger said, ‘Let’s go,’ and she went and never came back. Maybe she was abducted.

  Nathaniel doesn’t tell me how he knows my name, and I decide not to press the issue. ‘I don’t do this kind of thing,’ I tell him primly. ‘I’m sorry. You clearly think I’m another sort of woman.’

  ‘We don’t have time to discuss that.’ He grabs my arm.

  I grab it back. ‘How do you know I agreed to have dinner with Larry, anyway?’

  ‘He just told me in the men’s toilet. He said he’d found himself a lovely Irish colleen. He was dousing himself with aftershave. He said you’d gone to “pretty yourself up”; that’s how I knew I’d find you here.’

  ‘We’re just going to dinner,’ I say. ‘He says he wants an early night.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ Nathaniel is studying me with amusement.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well I turned up when I did.’

  I glare furiously into his bright-blue eyes. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘I’m implying that your dinner with Larry might not be quite as innocent as you think.’

  ‘That’s for me to find out, isn’t it?’ I snap. ‘I don’t need your interference. I… I could spray him in the face with my deodorant if I needed to.’

  ‘I think you should welcome my interference.’ Nathaniel leans languidly against the wall. ‘After all, it may save you the bother of spending the evening spanking Larry’s rather large bottom in some five-star hotel.’

  I almost fall over with outrage. ‘I would never spank Larry’s bottom!’ I shout. Tobias the sofa designer happens to be passing by just as I declare this, and he gives me a rather lecherous smile. ‘Why would you even suggest that?’ I splutter. ‘Do I look like the kind of woman who goes around doing that kind of thing?’