of course we do. We don’t want to go clubbing with that crew playing albatross.’
Molly brightened. So Helen was up for a stint in clubland. Usually she ended their evenings out when the restaurant staff stacked chairs around them. Molly flicked one of her corkscrew curls and waited for an escape plan to inspire her. Nothing happened.
‘It’s a long shot, angel face, but there’s just one course of action open to us,’ she said eventually.
‘Name it.’
‘We tell them we’re tired and we’re going home.’
Helen considered. ‘They’ll suggest accompanying us,’ she pointed out. ‘Should we mention our boyfriends will be waiting up?’
‘Shame on you, Sharkey, depending on a man – or the shadowy outline of one – to spring the trap. So much for your feminist principles.’
Helen pulled a face. ‘Fair’s fair, we’ve been leading them on. Behaviour like that isn’t in the feminist handbook. And backless dresses don’t leave much room for principles. So here’s what we’ll do: you ring for a taxi on the mobile from in here and when it arrives we’ll have our handbags and coats at the ready, leap to our feet and exit in a flurry of “wonderful to meet you and enjoy your stay” civilities, blowing air kisses two yards west of their cheeks. Deal?’
‘Deal. And the taxi will convey us straight to a club, not back to Sandycove via Blackrock.’
‘Certainly. You can choose whichever club you like, as long as it’s not too noisy, too dark, too funky, too happening, too crowded or too hot.’
‘Wonder which club is most popular with Dublin’s Greek community,’ puzzled Molly.
‘Dublin doesn’t have a Greek community. Now I’ll wend my way back to the table while you set our fiendish plan in motion.’
The nightclub was predictably grim – ‘face it, Moll, we’re too ancient for clubbing’; ‘speak for yourself, Sharkey’ – but Helen enjoyed the sense of connection with the wider world that she experienced simply by being immersed in a communal mass of bodies. Sometimes she had the feeling she was too self-contained and an evening like this reminded her she wasn’t an island. An isthmus existed, even if it tended to flood over.
Molly was right, there was nothing like a night on the tear. But in the aftermath Helen was jaded, spent both financially and physically. Her head was pounding – she couldn’t consume alcohol at the rate Molly packed it away – and her system by the following lunchtime hankered for caffeine slightly more than it craved licence to lie on the sofa. Although both were imperatives. So Helen wandered out to the kitchen. As she pressed the button on the kettle, realisation slammed her with the jolt of a cattle prod. She hadn’t thought of him once since 6.10 the previous evening. That totted up to eighteen hours in succession. Could this mean she was cured? Maybe the attraction was something she’d magnified out of proportion. Impossible to resist checking the answerphone, however.
She approached the phone, lifted it and the automated voice said: ‘You have three new messages.’ When she played them there was only static on the line – none of the callers had left a name. Except Helen knew there was only one caller and his identity was no mystery to her. A worm of unquiet niggled as she spooned granules into a mug patterned with an inverted comma – all right, it was a Celtic spiral although she tended to shy away from ostentatiously Irish objects. She made an exception in this case because it amused her to have a symbol representing infinity on an object with a lifespan as limited as a mug.
The phone rang: once, twice, three, four times. On the fifth peal she answered it.
‘Helen, I’ve caught you in at last. Where were you last night? Never mind, you can tell me when we meet. I’m in Dublin, staying at the Fitzwilliam and I’m coming to see you. We need to talk. You must give me your answer. I’ll order a taxi and be with you in half an hour or less.’
‘No, wait. I’ll meet you somewhere.’
‘Where?’ The man’s accent was similar to hers, but with an English intonation overlaying the Kilkenny pronunciation.
‘I’ll collect you from your hotel; we can find a park to walk in.’
‘See you in half an hour then. I’ll be waiting in the foyer.’
‘Patrick, I’m not even dressed yet. Make it an hour.’
Why oh why had she agreed? Why oh why had she stayed out so late last night? The hollows under her eyes would be sagging to her jawline. Why oh why hadn’t she sprung up and taken a shower as she intended, instead of diving below the duvet for an extra snooze? Why oh why was she thinking in cliché-ridden why-oh-whys? But a final one – why oh why was she developing a spot slap-bang between her eyebrows? Still, she could take care of that in seconds; concealer was up there with the polio vaccination in terms of service to humankind as far as Helen was concerned.
She washed and dressed at warp speed, cramming herself into last night’s moleskin rejects and adding a heavy woollen coat and velvet scarf. Her car keys went AWOL and she spent a frantic ten minutes turning her bag upside down and combing the pockets of all her jackets, until she found them in their usual place in the letter rack.
‘Catch a grip, Sharkey,’ she instructed the pallid face in the hall mirror. ‘It’s daylight, he’s not going to pounce. And, above all, remember you have willpower. Use it.’
But as she jammed the gearstick into reverse instead of first she had a premonition it would take more than self-control to bring her home unscathed from this encounter. For he had a knack of dissolving any resolve she managed to muster.
Patrick was standing on the steps of the Fitzwilliam Hotel scanning the traffic.
‘You’re late but I forgive you.’ He jumped into the front passenger seat and skim-kissed her cheek.
She flinched, then tried to mask it by flicking her hair behind her ears.
‘Will I find a parking space so we can go into the Green?’ She gestured across the road towards St Stephen’s Green, the city’s oxygen lung.
‘If you like. Or somewhere more private might be appropriate.’ He took stock of her profile as she searched for a gap in the stream of cars sailing around the park
‘Merrion then,’ she agreed, and headed back the way she’d come.
He started speaking as soon as she’d parked her Golf. As she locked the car, still bending over it, words poured from him in a rehearsed cascade.
Helen touched his elbow. ‘Wait until we’re sitting down.’
But they didn’t gravitate towards a bench; instead they paced the park’s outer perimeter, past the gaudily painted statue of Oscar Wilde facing his home, looking as louche as any devotee of his work could hope for; past flowerbeds waiting for spring to resuscitate them; past the canvas backs of paintings attached to railings, artwork which tourists examined and sometimes bought. But only if it were sentimental or scenic and preferably both.
They returned to Wild
