keep count of the number of words and when I’ve done twenty, stop me.’
‘More than twenty, and I’ll leave,’ Stella replied solemnly.
‘Forty-four, Irish, two daughters, fourteen and nineteen, married for twenty years, worked abroad, ran engineering company, divorced a year ago, head-hunted home. That’s more than twenty words, isn’t it?’ He stopped and his face had a faint weariness about it.
A hard divorce? wondered Stella with intuition. Or something else?
‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘That seemed tough for you, I didn’t mean it to be.’
‘No, you’ve a right to know who you’re having dinner with. Laying your life down in a mere twenty words makes it sound pretty hopeless.’
Stella fiddled with the stem of her wine glass. She wanted to ask why the marriage had broken up but was unsure of venturing into such personal territory. She decided to tell him her story. ‘Age: undisclosed.’
He laughed.
‘A woman’s age, like her weight and dress size, is highly classified information,’ Stella said gravely. ‘If I tell you any of them, I have to kill you. One daughter, wonderful Amelia, who’s seven and absolutely adorable.’
‘You’re using too many words,’ Nick put in.
‘Nick.’ She fixed him with a stern glance. ‘I’m a lawyer.’
He laughed again.
‘One daughter, Amelia, seven. Lawyer, specialising in property, divorced, erm…two fantastic younger sisters, great parents, yoga, perfume bottles, bad at picking restaurants…’ She broke off.
‘That’s good.’ ‘Tell me more about the perfume bottles bit.’
‘I love those little crystal perfume bottles, the ones with silver tops from ladies’ dressing tables a hundred years ago. I have magpie tendencies when it comes to junk like that. And costume jewellery, forties and fifties stuff.’
‘What about the fantastic sisters?’
Stella’s face always softened when she thought of Holly and Tara. ‘Holly’s the youngest and she works in the children’s department in Lee’s. She’s so funny, she’s brilliant, I worry about her, though.’ She didn’t know why she’d said that but she felt as if she could say things to Nick. ‘Tara,’ she continued, ‘is a storyline editor for National Hospital. She’s brilliant too. They just won an award at the television and radio awards.’
‘They sound wonderful. Are you a close family?’
‘Very. We’re like this tight unit. Mum, Dad, me, Holly, Tara, and now Amelia. The Miller clan. It’s all down to Mum, really,’ Stella added. ‘She’s an incredible person, very warm and strong. Mum has no time for family squabbles or long-running arguments. She taught us how important family is.’
Nick was quiet.
‘What about your family?’
‘I’ve a younger brother, Howard, and an older sister, Paula, and of course my mother. Paula lives in the same village as my mother near Wicklow town and she’s looked after her for years. They want to sell both their houses so they can move to a bungalow, which would be easier for my mother to get around. Paula’s artistic – she paints – and she hates sorting out legal matters, so my brother and his wife, Clarisse, have always done that side of things. Clarisse feels that now I’m back in the country, I can take over.’ His slightly wry smile revealed more than he was saying.
‘Clarisse feels put-upon and wants you to shoulder some of the burden?’ Stella offered.
‘You are intuitive,’ said Nick, impressed.
Through the meal, they talked about their jobs, places they’d worked and more about their families. Clarisse sounded vaguely like Aunt Adele, Stella reflected. By dessert, they had discussed every relative except their children – and their exes; a glaring omission.
‘Tell me about Amelia,’ Nick urged.
Stella produced a photo from her wallet. It had been taken the previous summer in Kinvarra, when her parents had held a barbecue for friends and family. Stella’s father had hung a low swing from a sycamore tree, and, in the picture, Amelia was sitting on it, colourful in pink and white shorts and T-shirt, laughing into the camera and with her hair swinging in two jaunty pigtails.
‘Beautiful, just like her mother,’ Nick said examining the photo. ‘What about her father? Do you share custody?’
‘Nothing that ordinary,’ Stella said. ‘He works in the oil business and he’s abroad all the time. Amelia spends time with him when he’s here. She’s with him now.’ Stella didn’t mention how she tried hard not to resent this.
‘I split up with my ex husband when Amelia was a baby. There wasn’t anybody else, we’d just made an awful mistake. I’d like to say we married too young but I was twenty-eight, old enough to know better,’ she added ruefully. ‘How about you?’
The silence seemed to go on forever and Stella would have done anything to claw back the words, but finally, Nick spoke.
‘Why does any marriage break up?’ he said. ‘We made a mistake too; it just took twenty years to figure it out. I was seconded to the company’s office in Stockholm for four months a couple of years ago and it would have been difficult for Wendy and the kids to come because of school. So we agreed that I’d go and come home as often as I could, which I did, every few weekends. Four months became six months and when I got back for good, we found it impossible to live together again. That sounds terrible,’ he said looking at Stella, ‘but it’s the truth. We even went to counselling for a while. It didn’t work. Talking about it made us realise that the only glue keeping us together was the girls. The problem was, Wendy was prepared to put up with that. I knew we couldn’t.’
‘That must have been tough,’ Stella said gently. ‘You’re not over your divorce, are you?’ she added, knowing she was going too far but not being able to stop herself.
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Believe me, I am over my divorce. I’m not over the trauma and hurt that went with it. It was the most personally painful thing I’ve ever experienced and it’s with me every day.’
‘What about the girls?’
Nick’s face lit up.
‘Jenna is fourteen and Sara is nineteen. Sara’s doing Arts in college and Jenna’s in school; mind you, she looks old enough to be in college. When she’s with her friends, they all look about twenty.’
He took out his wallet and extracted a photo of two girls. It looked like a holiday shot. Sara was fair-haired, lanky and smiled up at the camera with her father’s warm, intelligent eyes. Jenna was smiling too, but she looked more posed, as if she liked the camera. It certainly liked her. She was incredibly pretty with a heart-shaped face, almond eyes and dimples. Even the glint of the brace on her teeth couldn’t dim her teenage beauty.
‘How often do you see them?’
‘All the time, I couldn’t bear not to. But it’s caused some problems.
